Erkon's Awakening

Sheila opened her eyes for the first time in a week. She had been hopping through dreams and felt as if she had lived many lives. Her blue irises had no trouble adjusting to the light, as there was none. After a few seconds, she came back to her senses and remembered who she was, where she was, and what she had to do. Her right hand searched casually for a protrusion in the corner, and gently pressed the button. Her dilated pupils began retracting slowly as the light increased all around her, and the wall in front of her became less and less opaque. At that moment, her ears awoke from their long slumber to pass a message to her brain. It was the sound of a smooth, familiar voice.

"Good morning Sheila, hope you had a great rest." Sheila immediately recognized Ava, the onboard computer. Ava knew she had a great sleep, as it had monitored her vitals for the past hundred and eighty-two hours. It was simply an ancestral habit, back when humans inhabited planet Earth alone. These days were far away, in both space and time, if one likes to decouple them the way humans of old used to. 

"We have reached Vanya and will be entering its orbit soon," continued the voice. "The rest of the crew is already awake, except Arun." 

"Of course, Arun is still sleeping... He always asks to be woken up at the last minute... What a jerk..." Thought Sheila. It was up to the rest of them to prepare the planetship for entry. The planetship was a smaller ship, attached to the main spaceship, meant for orbital and atmospheric purposes. Kind of like a lifeboat in the old navy days, hanging from the ship's side.

The now transparent wall in front of her opened, inviting her to float in the empty bedroom. Despite being a large spaceship, the different sections had retained the conventional names given in traditional housing. The bedroom was nothing less than a circular hall, with pods lined along the wall. She localized Arun's pod, made a nasty-looking hand gesture, and floated towards the round exit door. 

To save energy, only a few areas aboard the ship had a gravity field enabled. It wasn't much, but a gravity of around two was enough to keep someone's feet on deck and, most importantly, to eat and drink normally. And that's exactly what Sheila saw upon entering the kitchen, where a cheerful Zoe was mindlessly sipping a purple and orange liquid. 

"Hey you!" she exclaimed as she noticed Sheila's right foot slowly making contact with the floor.

"I'm starving," said Sheila, "these nutrients the pods feed us can't compare to real food."

"You're absolutely right. Eat fast though, I heard Chang say we're boarding the plash in ten minutes." Plash had become a common shorthand for planetship, and spash for spaceship.

"Ayyyyyyye... Ok, I'll take a tonic juice like you then." With that she headed towards the transparent wall, behind which food and drinks lay perfectly lined, creating a mosaic of colors and taste. She picked a red and yellow bottled juice, made from a mix of fruits and nuts unknown to Earth. 

"Arun is still asleep?" asked Zoe. It was more of a rhetorical question. 

"As usual…" replied Sheila. "He'll float from pod to plash in a single leap, you'll see..." Before she had time to sit, a voice echoed throughout the spaceship. It was Jeff.

"Ladies and gentlemeeeeeen! The one-of-a-kind, extravagant, and uniquely luxurious planetary ship is now ready to welcome you aboard! Please come and join us to experience the adventure of a lifetime!" He was always ecstatic.

"Told you," said Zoe with a smile while getting up. "Let's go laugh at Arun's entrance, you'll finish your juice on the way." Luckily, the bottle was designed for zero-gravity too. 

The crew of five had been waiting for months for this trip. They had saved every penny they had to book a two-week vacation on Vanya, the leisure planet of the galaxy, during their month-long break. Of course, they had to waste sixteen days worm-hopping through deep space, but it was worth it. 

After floating through a few sections and corridors, they reached the planetship’s entrance where they were greeted by Chang and Jeff.

"Hello ladiiiies," started Jeff, in his usual way. "Chang prepared the navigation and I took care of the communications and routine systems check. We're ready to go."

"If Arun shows up," snarled Zoe. As if to prove her wrong, a shout came from behind her. Before she could hear it, Arjun crashed into her back.

"Damn you!" she shouted at him, while trying to slap his red laughing face. Both of them started to spin. When their heads were upside-down, Chang moved inside the planetship and invited the others to follow. 

Contrarily to what Jeff had said, the ship was not luxurious at all. In fact, it screamed the opposite. It was at least two generations old, as evidenced by the marks left everywhere by previous passengers.

"Take a seat and get ready for some action!" shouted Jeff, before taking one of the two front seats with Chang. "Ship's computer says we'll be landing in about twenty minutes. Think you can last that long without annoying the ladies, Arun?"

"Can't make any promises," grinned a reddish and sweaty Arun, taking his seat between Sheila and Zoe. Sheila strapped herself first, the strong harness pressing her spacesuit along the far end of the alcove-style reinforced seat.

"Guys, what's the weather forecast when we reach?" she asked.

"Don't know," replied Jeff. "Don't you prefer a surprise?" 

"I'd actually like to be prepared. Chang did you see anything while setting up the navigation?"

Chang checked the screen to his right and answered in a defeated tone. "I can't tell you much, this system is very old, it was difficult enough finding the files for Vanya. I didn't have much time to check for other things, but we'll know pretty soon anyway."

A minute and a half later, the planetship smoothly detached from the spaceship and fired its engines. Another minute and a half after that, it was doomed. 

They didn't see it at first, much less felt it. The nearby giant star, known for its subtle orange hue that cast a perpetual sunset on Vanya, had awoken from its unknown hibernation in the most dramatic way. It was Chang that noticed it at first.

"Something's wrong. I'm receiving odd messages from that outdated system." He proceeded to display the information on the main holographic screen, so that everyone could see. A graph occupied most of the interface, its main value exponentially increasing. Beneath the graph, alarming messages kept appearing.

"DANGER : Coronal Mass Ejection expected. Intensity [6] reached. Initiate safety mode immediately."    

"What is this intensity [6]?" asked Arun.

"It doesn't matter!" said Zoe. "It means the star is about to burst and we have to get out of here!”

"I've never seen intensity [6]," added Sheila.

"You've gone through one before?" It was Jeff this time, trying to turn his head to face her, unsuccessfully.

"Yeah, with my dad a few years back. I remember it because at first the computers told us there was a Coronal Mass Ejection of intensity one, and my dad didn't pay much attention to it. Then the intensity turned to two, and he started to panic." Her last words were followed by a short silence. They all looked at each other.

"Six is definitely not good then!" exclaimed Arun.

"Let's get out of here!" continued Zoe. "Activate the safety mode, quick!"

Jeff didn't need to look for it, every ship had its safety mode next to the autopilot. It was the standard on all ships, and one of the first things any pilot trainee learned while getting its license.

A voice confirmed that safety mode had been activated, and the ship's lights and other ambient effects changed to reflect it. The ship was not voice controlled, as per protocol, due to many unfortunate incidents in the early days of space travel. Only questions remained allowed. 

"Can you explain what intensity [6] means?" Jeff asked the computer.

"Sure," started the computer, in a voice similar to Ava. "It means the nearby star, named Erkon, is about to burst at six times the maximum Sun's strength, Earth's star, which was used as a reference for the scale."

"What does this mean?" Asked Arun. He too was losing his calm, which was not a good thing, knowing how indifferent he usually was. The computer understood it had to answer the follow-up question. 

"Erkon is about to release a massive burst of plasma, charged particles and magnetic field energy. Given your current position, Vanya being the closest planet orbiting Erkon, it means you will be caught in a massive geomagnetic storm due to the interactions with the planet's magnetosphere. I do not have information about anything recorded above intensity [4]."

This did not seem to reassure any of the already frightened crew. As if to make things worse, another warning message appeared. The intensity had now jumped from six to seven.

"Seven now?!" Jeff yelled, while Zoe turned pale. 

"What is going to hap-..." Chang tried to ask. They would never know the answer to that, or at least not from the computer. Erkon had erupted, like a massive volcano. However, there was no sound, no grandiose lava jets, no boulders, no smoke, no nothing. It hit them silently, but it had all the drama one could expect. 

The lights started fluctuating, followed by the sensors reporting conflicting values. At first, the ship started to stir off-course due to the loss of several sensors. Warning sounds echoed to alert the crew members. The safety mode program was doing its best to shield the ship, but was slowly losing control.

"What is happening?!" shouted Arun while gripping his harness tighter. They half-expected the computer to respond at that stage. All they could hear was a sort of electronic blur, struggling to form words, sounding like modulated static. As the computer's circuits were giving up millions at a time, Sheila's brain circuits were firing at lightning speed. It all came back to her.

"Where's being hit by the solar wind! It's more like a solar storm in this case! It's disrupting all the electronics!”

It was already starting to feel very hot inside. They initially thought their sweating was due to the stress. 

"It's getting very hot now!" commented Zoe. 

"It must be the radiation!" yelled Chang, who was trying hard to remember what he had learnt a few years back.  

"No! The whole ship is a real furnace! My harness is starting to burn! We're being fired upon with high-energy particles! We have to divert all the power to our shields! It might deviate most of them!"

"We've lost control of the ship anyway!" acknowledged Chang.

"Navigation systems are down, communications too! Jeff, transfer everything left to the shields before we lose power!"

There was no time to lose. The geomagnetic storm was about to induce strong currents in the spacecraft systems, leading to power surges that could damage the components, especially those producing the shields.

Jeff transferred everything he could to the shields. The holographic screen disappeared, along with most visuals. A strong and steady buzzing sound quickly grew louder, indicating that the shields were now operating at maximum capacity. In contrast, the engines came to a full stop. With no sensors nor navigational computers, the ship started to spin slowly, then faster, and even faster. Not that they noticed anything at first, until they realized they could no longer make out the planet’s surface through the front window.

“We’re spinning like a bullet!” exclaimed Zoe, half-dazed by the spiraling effect.

“Good!” It was Chang, nervously responding. “It will distribute the load on all sides of the ship!” 

The heat was building up. Thinking straight was becoming increasingly difficult. Meanwhile, Vanya was slowly pulling the planetship, caught in its gravitational field. They were rapidly losing altitude, descending deeper into the planet’s atmosphere. As they made their way through the ionosphere, the increased number of particles added to their drag, making them fall even faster. Vanya was a giant beast trying to swallow them whole, while Erkon was aggressively firing everything it had at it, a scene worthy of a Titan’s fight.

Then, the most unexpected event occurred. The magnetic interactions became so strong that the circuits overloaded, causing all engines to switch back to maximum power.

“Jeff what the hell!” screamed Sheila. 

“It’s not me I swear!”

The ship started to vibrate uncontrollably. The buzzing sound of the shields was rapidly replaced by the roaring noise of the engines, then by a shriek, and finally a cacophony of screams, as if an orchestra was tuning all its instruments at once.

“Stop the engines! They’re about to break apart!” shouted Zoe.

And so they did. The explosion shook the ship and its passengers, more than all the vibrations combined suffered so far. The engines had been drawing most of the power that should have gone to the shields, making the ship even more vulnerable. Ultimately, they were overwhelmed by the sheer force of their own might.

As a goodbye present, the engines’ demise had led to a sharp increase of the overall temperature, depleted power banks, and multiple cracks and holes in the hull, which was beginning to break apart.

With all the power now back on the shields, the ship was continuing its descent. By some miracle, they were holding on. The old ship too, as it entered the lower atmosphere at unsafe speed, to say the least, leaving a wide hole in the ionosphere.

Sheila was barely keeping it up. She witnessed Zoe passing out, followed shortly by Arun.

“Abandon… the… rear… shields!” she screamed, hoping Jeff was still awake.

A half-conscious Jeff rerouted all the remaining power to the front shields, to absorb the bulk of the re-entry forces. After which he passed out, his right hand falling on the controls mid-air.

It was now left to Chang and her to survive the most intense geomagnetic storm ever recorded, inside a half-torn centuries-old ship.

As if to give them some respite, the engine’s explosion had somehow reduced the spinning of the ship. The ocean was in view, and the planet’s curvature appeared almost as a straight line. They were now face to face with Erkon, the maker of their doom, as they dived towards the water.

Erkon was relentless. The Coronal Mass Ejection was still going on, throwing high-energy particles at the brave forward shields. A dense stream of orange starks was steadily obscuring the view, as a symbol of the fierce battle between the two. Unfortunately, all signs indicated that the shields were losing the fight. The hull, stretched to unimaginable levels under the extreme heat, didn’t have much longer to live.

Sheila so no other option. She mustered all of her leftover strength to yell at Chang.

“Chang…! Self-destruct…! Initiate…Sel-... protocol…!”

With trembling hands, arms and body, Chang reached out for the hidden command, in-between the two pilots' seats. He activated his command successfully. Then, Sheila started to cry. She could see Chang’s left arm fully stretched, shaking like a reed caught in a storm, unable to reach Jeff’s self-destruct command.

She knew it was over. She closed her eyes, one last time, her blue irises wet from the tears.

The rest happened in a fraction of a second. The shields gave up in a final shockwave, leaving the hull to collapse under the built-up pressure, crushed from all sides. The next instant, it was gone.

Sheila could still feel the harnessed seat holding her tight. She opened her eyes, to witness something she never expected. They were in the lifeboat, the modern-day one, the ship’s core that doubled as an escape pod.

The crushing of the hull, combined with the magnetic interference and induced currents, had somehow activated the self-destruction mechanism. Perhaps Chang’s input had triggered it. The escape pod was ejected upwards, which due to the ship's now near-vertical diving, had propelled the pod parallel to the ocean's surface. With a speed of about fourteen times Earth's sound speed, the pod ricocheted above the surface of the ocean twelve times, a new record by itself.

They were all found unconscious, minutes later, with major burns all over the body and near-death radiation poisoning. Nothing modern-day medicine couldn't heal.

It took them two months to recover physically. They decided to swap their two-week vacation for a year-long break, to recover mentally. Erkon had changed them forever.

Health scientists estimated this incident had cost them around ten to fifteen years of potential longevity, which could explain their sense of urgency and drive to achieve great things in life, which they all did.

Jeff naturally got awarded all the credit, and went on to become one of the best private pilots of his era. Chang would go on to become admiral of the most emblematic flagship of his time. To no one's surprise, Arun would follow the footsteps of his father and become a famous politician. However, unlike him, he would be known for his humility and kindness, which many would rightfully attribute to “Erkon's Awakening” event. Zoe would turn out to be a renowned environmental biologist, responsible for terraforming another Vanya-like world near a smaller star. She would end up naming it Sheila, as they all knew it was her who thought of activating the self-destruct protocol. In their eyes, it was she who had saved their lives.

As for Sheila — the human being, not the planet — she would become universally known as the lead physicist responsible for developing a new shield technology, doubling the efficiency of the latest designs. This new technology would use a groundbreaking new principle, known as the “Erkon Effect".