The Drellic Saga: Books One, Two and Three, Page 3

  Chapter One

  Callum Hammond was born on July 27th, 1998. He had dreamt of going into space since he was old enough to comprehend the world around him. He joined the United States Navy in 2016, on his eighteenth birthday.

  By the summer of 2020, he had become one of the top naval aviators in his company. By this time, the military was beginning to launch several new combat plane prototypes. Callum was selected for test runs for almost every one of them.

  A sleek new fighter jet called the F-20 King Cobra had quickly become his favorite. During its time, it was the fastest and most evasive aircraft in the world and for the first three months of its existence, Callum was the only pilot in the world, qualified to fly it. His incredible skill and unconventional style in the cockpit was what first drew the attention of Darkside.

  Darkside was a top secret government organization that was responsible for black ops missions in space. By 2025, a collaborative effort between the United States and Japan, had already launched several probes to the outer rim of the solar system, to investigate strange radio signals coming from Pluto.

  In the beginning, the transmissions were mostly comprised of static. But after further analysis, a faint human sounding voice was discovered, buried beneath the white noise, and the governments of both nations erupted with mass confusion and insatiable curiosity.

  Days later, a brand new, deep space shuttle that had yet to be named, was seized from NASA, by Darkside. The ship had already been tested and had successfully made a round trip to Jupiter and back, without the knowledge of the general public. However, deep space telescopes had recently revealed that since the transmissions from Pluto were first detected, the orbiting satellite moons of Pluto were becoming unstable and breaking apart.

  Charon, the largest of Pluto’s moons, was behaving far more erratically than the other masses and was later determined to be the true source of the radio signals. Something incredible was happening in that region of space and it would take a very special pilot, to lead a team there, for a manned investigation, if such an investigation were to be attempted.

  Callum Hammond was summoned by Darkside almost immediately. He accepted the mission without hesitation. It was an incredibly dangerous and unpredictable assignment in space and he simply couldn’t resist. His first opportunity to leave the earth’s atmosphere would carry him to the edge of the solar system.

  Months of training in simulators and short range flights in the actual deep space shuttle would follow. Since its first actual mission would be taking it to Pluto, Darkside decided that Hades would be an appropriate name for the craft.

  Once Callum had gone above and beyond the standards for being a space ready pilot, it was time to select the flight crew that would be joining him on his journey to Charon.

  It was a month before the scheduled launch of the Hades mission. The date was January 14th, 2027. Callum Hammond was standing on a balcony at the Darkside Space Center, just outside Tokyo, Japan, overlooking the launch site of the Hades spacecraft.

  The ship didn’t stand upright like the space shuttles of the late 20th and early 21st century. It sat perfectly horizontal on its landing gear, at the beginning of a long metallic runway. The body was sleek and deceivingly small. The 16 boosters beneath the tail, were also small but devastatingly powerful, when ignited simultaneously.

  Callum did his best to appear calm and collective, but was actually boiling over with anxiety. He was wearing his blue flight suit, which he rarely took off, and carefully lit up a cigar, while blocking the wind.

  He took a long puff, then exhaled slowly. It was ritualistic for him.

  “I thought you were saving that,” came a voice from behind him.

  He turned around and pushed his long dark hair from his brow. Then, once clearing the air of smoke, he could see Richard Morioka approaching him.

  Richard was a Japanese engineer from Tokyo, who had been assigned to the Hades mission, as the lead science officer. He and Callum had become fast friends in the few months they had been stationed together at Darkside.

  Callum smiled and shook Richard's hand, after taking another puff of his cigar.

  "It's never too early to start celebrating," Callum said. "I've been waiting for this my whole life."

  Richard chuckled and asked, "How was your lap around the moon?"

  "Max threw up the whole way over the dark side. It was his first time going up," Callum replied with a smirk.

  "Are you serious?" asked Richard.

  "I am," said Callum. "You haven't lived until you've seen vomit in zero gravity."

  Callum and Richard both laughed at that thought and then turned their attention back to the gleaming hull of Hades. A look of worry then came over Richard's face, as he cautiously turned to Callum.

  "You know she got accepted right?" he asked Callum.

  There was a long awkward pause.

  Callum stared off into the distance then responded with, "Yeah, I know."

  He was saddened for only a brief moment, before smiling and looking Richard in the eye with his signature hint of arrogance.

  "But you know me," Callum said. "No one is going to stop me from enjoying every last second I'm out there; not even her."

  Richard faked a smile and looked down and away, as Callum struggled to laugh away his worries. It wasn't going to be that simple and Richard knew that all too well.

  The woman Richard was referring to was Simone West. She and Callum had met in Langley, Virginia, in the year 2020. Callum was only scheduled to be in Langley for a brief time, before being shipped out to an air craft carrier, for his first of many flight ops.

  Simone was interning at the CIA and despite being constantly separated by life, she and Callum ended up dating for nearly six years. But their relationship came to an abrupt end, when she mysteriously vanished from Callum's apartment one night and then proceeded to ignore any and all of his attempts to contact her.

  Even Callum's attempts to contact her family and friends had failed. Her apartment and her parents' home were suddenly vacant. Every contact number and email address he had for anyone, who had ever had contact with her, had become invalid. It was as if she never existed.

  Six months passed by, before Callum finally gave up. He was summoned by Darkside to take part in the Hades mission not long after that, and Simone had become a distant memory.

  Then, on the day of his initial mission briefing for Hades, they passed each other in a hallway. As they drew closer to one another, he could make out her unmistakable long flowing red hair, light freckles and bright green eyes. Her presence took his breath away and he could feel himself beginning to panic.

  He was being led into the briefing room by his superiors, while she was being accompanied by an armed escort, for some reason. When they made eye contact, it was as if time had stopped. They came to a halt and stared deeply into each other’s eyes without saying a single word to one another. No words could have adequately described what they were feeling anyway.

  Simone's armed escort instructed her to move along, as did the officers who were escorting Callum to the briefing room. They then went their separate ways.

  Callum spent the next few weeks pretending that it had been a dream. However, once Simone's name appeared on the Hades flight crew manifest, his world was shattered all over again. He longed for answers and knew that he finally had an opportunity to acquire them. That realization was the only thing keeping him balanced. He also knew that he couldn't allow his personal feelings to conflict with the mission.

  His dreams of space flight were finally about to become a reality, and he wasn't about to allow his need for closure with Simone to jeopardize that. Richard then patted Callum on the back.

  "We better get back inside," Richard said. "We have a meeting about the propulsion system in ten."

  "I know," Callum said, as he continued to puff on his cigar. "I'm going to finish this up and I'll be right in."

  "You got it," Richa
rd said, just before walking away.

  Callum finished his cigar and scraped it against the railing of the balcony, extinguishing it. He then flicked it into the trees below and gazed out at the setting sun.

  "Why the hell are you here?" he asked himself; referring to Simone.

  He gave the beautiful ship one last look, before heading back into the compound. The lights on the runway, then began to light up one by one, as the sun continued to set into the horizon.

  Unbeknownst to Callum, Simone was standing alongside the ship and had been watching him the entire time. A tear streamed down her face, as she put her hand on the hull of the ship.

  "So, you're going to make it all worth it?" she asked, staring intently at the seemingly, flawless metal body of Hades. "I really hope so," she added.

  She then looked up at the balcony, where Callum had just been standing and whispered, “I’m sorry.”