"B344-A, three minutes, to ejection... B344-A, three minutes, to ejection..."
"Ready?" Spiller asked. I knew that it was meant for his regular check, and it wouldn't really had bother him if I had stayed quiet. But unlike him I was new to the squad and much newer was the mission. So replying was necessary.
"Are the co-ordinates' set?"
"You are scared, aren't you?"
"Shut it, Spiller... I am not in the mood..."
"Guys we've got an angry dick-shit here!" Spiller smiled looking at me getting irritated.
From the height of 17000 feet, even the most practiced jump in the base camp would be at level with walking on fire. But we were one of the special squads! We had to be the best. And fear never could be any option for us!
It was a time close, when Spiller took the jump. With a much smooth movement he was gone, absorbed into the atmosphere. I opted to be the last one, for a reason, I wouldn't call fear, but to get a close idea of how and when others jump. The practice was no near reality.
Daze then Alan. Xian followed him, and next was Cathey. I could feel the bids of perspiration running down my forehead inside the helmet. My turn was coming near. And with every grain of second, I could feel my heart beats proportionally increasing. Cathey either have been quite a confident one, or else she had to be the oldest member, for she was freely chatting with Eban and talking about her plans after the mission.
Eban's jump would be followed by mine. So I started to prepare. I opened up the settings of the suit and as I did that the front glass of my helmet changed into a transparent screen showing all the required options. Looking at the oxygen supply I blinked twice and as the screen changed, showing all the supply settings, I commanded, "42%".
Eban had jumped by then and so was my turn on hand. "Calm down... Its just a jump!" Another failed attempt of calming myself down and thus I moved towards the gate. It opened only for few seconds, letting only one to pass. And it did the same in my time too. I was breathing heavily looking at the gates move apart, giving a narrow view of the night atmosphere of 51 Pegasi B. As it opened up to its full length, the outer camouflaged surface of the aircraft, changed. And as I stepped into, what appear a invisible air surface, I soon found the colors changing and soon the visible atmospheric beauty changed into metals and metalloids. Thus again the main gate was visible. Hiding everything I had just seen.
"Ejection in T minus 10 seconds" The voice of autopilot haunted me.
"Yeah... Yeah sure"
On the left side wall a sudden holographic projection appeared inside my helmet screen. It must had been a transmission from the craft's main network.
Welcome to Bellerophon (51 Pegasi B)
Current Atmospheric Pressure: 0.36 Atmospheric Pressure
Current Regional Temperature: 784 K (511 °C / 952 °F)
Gravitational Acceleration: 3.24 meter/second²
Proposed Objective: Reaching Sector 8A-21A
"Exus, put helmet lock online" I ordered the exoskeleton wrapped around me. That old pal immediately reacted, blocking my front glass screen of the helmet with a metal guard, which turned complete invisible as soon as the cameras attached to it turned on.
I was starting to like the situation when suddenly the voice of the countdown threw me back to reality.
"Ejection in T minus 3 seconds"
I finally saw the doors glow blue, indicating that it was going to blow open. I remembered the training session - Let your body go, during ejection. I was going to do that exact thing!
"Ejection in T minus 1 seconds"
What a life! I thought I don't even know, will I survive this mission or not. And thus opened the door in its ever fast pace. Within seconds I was sucked outside with an enormous force created by the difference in air pressure, in and out, the craft. And I was falling down, before I could figure out I was outside.
Above was the craft, the IXS Tiara, slowly reducing to a dot. I knew what to do next.
"Exus are scanners online? I want the internal molecular structure of the entire atmospheric components!"
I soon found I was gliding down through an atmosphere of nothing other that a huge amount of hydrogen and helium mixed with a mediocre number of silicates, which were clouds there. Although that was okay for I was prepared for this, but there was something I wasn't quite comfortable with. Bellerophon wasn't just a gas giant of hydrogen and helium, it had a core of metals mainly like, lead and iron, which due to the heavy temperature used to become vapours. Now heavy temperature wasn't what was shown in the info-chart in the craft, it was in fact half, the strength, and that was because we were on the side opposite to the one facing its parent star, 51 Pegasi. And at such high temperature the gases in the atmosphere used to get heated up and replaced in quite a quick succession, leading to storms up to 1000 miles per hour winds mixed with molten iron raining almost horizontally. It was the time, I actually had found traces of iron in the atmosphere, giving me chills through the bones.
It was still fine as the atmosphere wasn't upsetting with heavy winds, and thus soon I found myself enjoying that foreign planet. I saw the horizon, red. It was much like a drop of blood being smeared all around the horizon. The silicon clouds weren't quite different from those of my home planet. Traces of the distant cosmos could be seen from the gaps between the clouds.
I soon caught the team's communication frequency. And there was the same old irritating voice.
"Dude! YOU'RE ALIVE?! Fuck, I didn't expected that!" Spiller cried, overwhelmed to find me alive.
"Where are you?" Xian's voice came.
"Heading towards 8A-21A, I guess... My position detectors aren't quite working" I told, paying least attention to the fear which that question triggered.
"Boy... you should have checked before... We all have found each other in the radar." Daze replied throwing me into an enormous pool of fear.
"Guys, its okay I know the north of this planet at least! The scanners are working! I can figure out..."
"Fuck! is that Akhil?!" Cathey asked.
"Yeah" I said.
Hearing that she suddenly said something which wasn't quite pleasing at all. "Look, if I were you, I would had giving a SOS to Tiara... as you know, how calculated the fall is... So if by any chance you miss the spot, you would be falling deep into that core. And I guess you know what fate lies for you in there?... Anyways best of luck for your journey to 1265 kelvin!"
"Yep! Hope you die!" Spiller laughed.
"Guys... this is just a..."
Suddenly the connection went out and with that a stream of fluid fear returned. This time it was loneliness. On the horizon, there seemed to be a swollen red spot, which I knew was created by the light from the parent star on the opposite side. I looked around just to find a hydrogen-helium fog covering everything distant in that planet. Suddenly the helmet screen flashed:
10000 feat and lowering!
Damn it! It was nowhere to be seen! 'It', the portal. Before the mission Professor had made it quite a point that the portal would be floating somewhere in Sector 8A-21A and to get to it we had to jump out of the craft. I was in the same Sector, but was unable to get anything into my view to call that a portal, finally accepting that I was lost.
Falling to the ground was never the matter, for the exoskeleton was strong and could easily had withstood a pressure of around 400GPa. The problem wasn't even the core, in fact the suit had titanium carbide and tungsten carbide compounds added, which could sustain three times the temperature outside on the core surface. The true problem was that the atmospheric winds around the core were breaking strong. And I had a fear that the suit might not be able to take so much together.
6500 feat and lowering!
Something suddenly stuck my suit as I saw the system go crazy with warning of foreign projectile. And then another. I soon ordered "EXUS! Scan for temperature and composition of the projectile!"
I saw the scanning progress and soon realizing, the fate that was dramatically drawing near to me. I was in the zone of unrest. This was the usual point of heat exchange and as the cold wind containing somewhat a semisolid iron was moving down to this point, my fear of iron rain was becoming reality. Below this point I was going to get rapid temperature changes. I didn't wasted time anymore, searching for the portal, rather I worked the suit's setting, increasing its user safety to a maximum.
4000 feat and lowering!
By that time molten iron had already started to rain. And with winds of speed equivalent to the Mach I of our craft, those already scary looking molten iron drops had became much like bullets. But the problem didn't ended there. I couldn't judge the direction of the movements of wind. It was flowing and changing direction every now and then. Some of the iron drops when were striking my suit, were cutting through it, creating another very common fear of a fire spark in hydrogen.
2000 feat and lowering!
I was breathing heavily and was unable to do anything. The helmet screen was flickering with low supply of electricity, but was determined not to give up, and so was I! I knew by then that falling to the core means the end of this journey. But it was inevitable. I was breathing heavily just to try and think. There got to be a way! I thought. THINK! THINK! THINK! But to vain. I had already lost the portal and sending a SOS to Tiara would be useless as it won't be getting to such low altitudes.
1000 feat and lowering!
That was the last message Exus showed me, after which it turned off, sealing me permanently in that piece of titanium. The motors moving the heavy parts of the armor also had shut down leading me to get fixed to my position. By that time the screen had also turned off. All hopes of survival were gone. I stayed there blindly staring at the darkness inside the suit.
But then, a sudden sound and I felt the direction of gravity change. I was lying on the core maybe, and that was all I could think by then, although I could never relate that sound to that of a crashing sound with a molten metallic surface and nowhere near was the feeling to that of floating in a molten metallic fluid.
The front helmet suddenly opened as I found myself lying somewhere in a silvery white room.
"B344-D, congratulation. You are the first to reach the portal!"
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To be continued in chapter 2...