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Chapter 12: Visiting

Author: Arya

Humans have always been selfish beings no matter how much someone claims to be not selfish, but being selfish itself has its pros and cons. The ideology behind selfishness itself is contradictory. Caring and thinking of one’s own benefit isn’t wrong. But what is wrong in it is harming others because of your own personal interest.

Humans are social creatures. They can’t stand being left out. The United Federation was also a council with a bunch of such people with selfish thoughts. Percy knew this and he also knew that the contingency plan prepared by them was flawed. He had studied the plan before. It was made not with the propaganda of saving the human race or any other noble cause.

The United Federation only wanted those people who could be useful. Useful not to the Human race, but to the United Federation. They never thought about those civilians and common people who had no idea about the overall world scenario. This so-called council of the United Federation was nothing but a bunch of people with selfish thoughts who would do anything, even killing every human, to preserve their dominance, the main reason why Percy had always been irritated by them.

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On the island. An Osprey was preparing to lift off. The engine roared and the Osprey took to the air.

Percy was seated in the newly modified Osprey performing system checks. The aircraft was an Osprey based model; it had a newly developed prototype engine retrofitted with a cosmic generator as a power source capable of achieving a speed of one-third close to light, at its peak. Instead of rotating rotors, the engine had thrusters attached for maximum efficiency. The aircraft was designed with an alloy of metals incorporated and bombarded with cosmic energy. The hull of the aircraft was designed to sustain heavy pressure and was also designed to travel in space, but due to its technological limitations it would not be able to sustain large distance travel but it could travel anywhere in the solar system if stressed to its limits.

The propaganda of the trip was to test the aircraft and the survey of the moon base. In person Percy had never been to the moon base. As Percy completed the system checks, he sat on his seat and activated the in-built life support systems. Since the gravity drive was not completed yet there would be no gravity on the aircraft. But the G-force would be strong enough to crush his skeletal structure. So a special type of exosuit was designed to help him navigate and ease the movements of his bodies while at the same time reducing the impact produced by the G-force.

-Click Click-

[System check confirmed.]

[Ready for space entry.]

[Awaiting confirmation.]

A metallic voice reverberated in the room. It was a basic assistant as Aria had tasks which required its personal attention and another computer assistant had been installed.

“Seal the ports. Activate thrusters, take us to space. ” Percy had a smile on his face. His blood boiled like any other hot-blooded youth, he too had a thirst for adventure. Even though there was no Aria, the computer assistant was still inter-connected to Aria’s network and had a link with it.

[Activating space travel.]

[Engine output stabilized at 10%.]

[Exiting Stratosphere.]

[Entering Ionosphere.]

There was an amazing impact of G-force on Percy’s body but the exosuit withstood the majority of impact. Finally, the aircraft left the Ionosphere and there arrived the weightlessness of space. It was wonderful. As if time had been stopped for a few seconds. Percy could see the beautiful space and earth from the camera modules installed.

[Zero-Gravity Entry confirmed.]

The computer voice broke his trance.

He took a deep breath and commanded, “Activate course plan and commence with engine testing”.

[Confirmed.]

The aircraft thrusters aligned itself to the direction of the moon and thus began the journey. Since the engine output in space would be high as compared to earth, it had to be adjusted accordingly. Thus, the computer had to run various tests for it. During the entire test run, Percy would be like a sandbag.

As the test commenced, the aircraft was pushed further. Sometimes it would move fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes there would be an intense vibration and heat being radiated from the engine, sometimes it would just turn too cold. After what seemed like an eternity the aircraft stabilized.

[Test run successful.]

[Suitable engine output stabilized at 5%.]

“Dammit, after all that modification it sums up to only 5%.”

Percy was frustrated. The resources invested behind this single aircraft were enormous. One could say even with the ability of the Jackson group, one could hardly build another 2 of such aircrafts. Even though the engine could travel one-third of the speed of light. The components of the aircraft could not handle the toll, tension and most importantly the after effects of the time dilation. The most it could work with was 50% and that was when all of its components would be replaced with the enhanced parts. The 50% show was also hypothetical. The aircraft was even worse due to the issue of hull integrity it could only work with 5% of the maximum achievable speed or else it would be destroyed and this was with the metal enhanced with cosmic energy. One must know that the metal was soaked and heavily bombarded in an amount of energy which could sustain a city for about a decade and still have much of it left for use. But still the speed was sufficient to reach the moon in almost 1.2 hours give and take a few minutes. With the aircraft moving so fast all Percy could see was fast moving space, so he chose to close his eyes and rest on his seat preparing mentally for the mission.

Approximately 1.3 hours later the computer voice beeped.

[Arriving destination.]

[Preparing to reduce speed.]

[Brace for impact.]

The aircraft reduced it’s speed with a boom and Percy felt as if a small hammer hit his chest.

When one thinks of the moon and the stars it feels all very good and nice. That is the reality of the world. Everything looks nice and good from far away. When closer, it would seem pretty normal sometimes or even a bit more ugly. Space could be very dangerous. The silence there could kill us social creatures.

As Percy looked at the display, he could see the surface of the moon full of craters. The entire landscape of the moon was riddled with these craters. These craters were the proof of the epic battle fought for survival of the human race years ago. All those years ago when mankind was on the brink of extinction they secretly built a hideout on the moon. According to Cero the amount of resource and labor required almost drained the race. If it wasn’t for the construction of this base maybe they wouldn’t have been affected so badly in the battle. The moon base was situated at the dark side so the aircraft steadily moved towards its destination. After a few minutes Percy’s screen turned black and the aircraft reached its destination. Since the previous mission was successful, the base layout was very clear and precise. Percy switched on the lights and greeted him from the view of the base.

The screen showed the live footage of the moon base. Percy unbuckled from the seat and started to dress himself in his prototype space suit. The exosuit was designed for atmospheric usage while the space suit needed more care and finer details for larger duration of space sustainability. Even though the base was big enough for the aircraft to enter, he had to switch off the life support as he did not want to take any potential radiation and virus risks, by flushing the aircraft with vacuum and by potentially sealing himself and the cabin he would feel safer. After he finished preparation, he officially started his mission. His mission was simple, scouting the base for any metals that can be salvaged and for any possible clues which were missed during previous missions. As the mission started the aircraft entered the base. Even though it was a base it was large enough for his aircraft to venture inside.

The base was a pyramid shape structure which was camouflaged by the darkness inside a crater. The structure of the base was the same as pyramidal temples found on earth during the Mayan period. According to the inheritance cube the earth pyramids were only a prototype for this huge structure. As the aircraft ventured inside, Percy activated the sonar as due to interference from the radiation, it was not possible for the transmission to be accurate. Inside of the base was made of a type of a metal covered in ashy substance which seemed dust, but was actually burnt skin. From the amount one could assume the amount of population and its scale of destruction as almost all the beings inside must have turned into ash.