Terraforming Fire

“Is everything ready?” Garett asked.

“Define ready?” Mandy said, typing away on her keyboard. The glow of her monitors lit up her workstation.

“Did the software update get sent out to the fleet?”

Mandy looked up at her monitors that showed the status of each vessel in their fleet, their locations on the galactic map, and a countdown to their press conference, respectively. She clicked her keyboard a few more times and the status monitor flashed a green dot next to every vessel. 

“It appears so. I have a few last minute checks, but it will be ready before the press conference,” Mandy said.

“Skip the checks, let’s begin with the drilling.”

“Aren’t we supposed to wait until the press conference begins?”

“Nobody does anything live anymore. And besides, if something goes wrong I have time to sell my shares.”

Mandy swiveled around in her chair, looking up at Garett with his goofy grin. “This is serious Garett. Drilling into one planet is a big deal. And we are doing five at once.”

“Good thing you wrote the update then. And besides, nobody is living on these planets. If something doesn’t go quite right, we don’t have to worry about insurance claims.”

“You better hope you're right,” Mandy said, clicking enter on the keyboard.

A rectangular bar overlaid each ship on the status monitor, showing the status as DRILLING. It did not take long before the radio on Garett’s hip started to chirp.

“Vessel One Five Charlie to Control,” a voice said over the radio.

“Go ahead Vessel One Five Charlie,” Garett said.

“We have a situation here. The planet has...split apart.”

“Say again Vessel One Five Charlie. You said the planet split apart?”

A screeching sound came over the radio before the voice spoke again, “What the hell is that?”

“Vessel One Five Charlie, what’s going on?”

“Control, there is something inside the planet. It’s huge. Its–” the voice said, before all that filled the air was static.

Mandy’s status monitor flashed and Vessel One Five Charlie showed up on the screen as UNREACHABLE. On her other monitor, red blimps started to appear on the galactic map.

“Vessel One Five Charlie, say again?” Garett said.

“I lost the status reading on the ship,” Mandy said.

“Get it back.”

“Garett...I think it was destroyed,” Mandy said, taking her hands off the keyboard, staring at the status monitor screen.

“How?”

“These don’t just go down...unless–”

“Unless what?” Garett asked impatient with her slow response.

“Unless the entire ship was destroyed.”

Garett paced around the room, pushing his radio into his forehead. “What about the others?”

“They are showing up alright. But we are getting weird blimps on some of our previous terraformed planets,” Mandy said, clicking away on her mouse.

“Great. Two crises in one day,” Garett said and held the radio to his mouth. “Control to Rescue Three.”

“Rescue Three, Go ahead,” a young voice said over the radio.

“You are needed in Sector Fifteen, outside Planet Hestore. We lost contact with the drilling vessel. Expect mass casualties.”

“Rescue Three enroute.”

Garett leaned on Mandy’s chair. “Tell me some good news.”

“These red dots here. They are showing that the planets are being split apart, yet I see no reports of abnormal energy readings, asteroids, black holes, nothing.”

“Do we have orbital cameras?”

“Let me pull them up,” Mandy said, typing away again until the galactic map was hidden by four different video feeds from four different terraformed planets. Each one was split into and a planet sized silver dragon without wings clung to half of the planet. If it wasn’t for the difference in how the planets looked, they would have thought it was the same creature in each view.

“Move aside,” Garett said, pushing Mandy out of her seat.

“What are you going to do?”

“Selling my shares. Short this company and get the hell out of Dodge,” Garett said, pulling up his investment portfolio next to the ferocious wingless dragons.

“Are you kidding me right now?”

“Every man for himself.”

“But what about those creatures? We need to alert the Galactic Naval Fleet.”

“Done,” Garett said with a final tap on the keyboard.

“You contacted them already?”

“No. I sold my shares. You want to contact them, here you go.” Garett tossed her the radio that she fumbled in her hands.

“Garett, you are a coward,” Mandy said, watching him make his way to the door. 

“No Mandy, I’m smart enough to see a once in a lifetime opportunity when it comes around.”

“This is a catastrophe, not an opportunity.”

“Not from where I’m standing. Have a nice life kid,” Garett said and the door closed behind him.

Mandy stared down at the rugged radio in her small hand. The static on the other end became deafening, yet paralyzing. Her thumb hovered over the talk button on the side while her grip tightened. The dragon-like creatures roared into the void of space, but instead of silence, Mandy heard their terrifying cries over the radio static. She dropped her radio, because their cries were not incoherent screams of a monster. They said a name. Mandy.