Transterran Gambit

Leda was the first one to the hatch and triggered the “open” switch. Four more conduits were required to reach bay 18.

“Janus… Booster, where are you guys?” Weston said as the hatch ground open. His earpiece buzzed. He looked at Leda. “They’re at bay ten. They’ll get there before us.”

“Come on!” Leda said and broke into a run toward the next hatch with Weston chasing her. “I don’t want to miss this!”

Weston caught up as she stopped to trigger the next hatch. “Did the company train you for this? You seem to know an awful lot about what needs to happen here.”

“They sent me to find out what was going on,” Leda said and slapped a palm against the hatch trigger. “I might know a few things you don’t about this. It doesn’t sound like we’re getting a choice on if we want to make contact. I think they do.”

Weston’s earpiece buzzed again… nine minutes.

***

The thing, a shuttle or transport, entered tentatively between the open bay doors. First a silver parabola came into view, and then it became an egg shape that barely cleared the sides and top of the entrance as it slowly glided in. Leda, Weston, and six others watched through the window of the shift director’s office overlooking the empty bay.

“Do you feel that?” Leda said as her feel started to tingle. It’s making the floor vibrate. What could be doing that?” Her foot started to tap with nervous energy and soon her stomach rolled. She lurched away from the window and found the wastebasket before vomit erupted. When she went, she set off two more of the party, everyone ill at-ease. The compartment stank of bile and acid.

“It’s starting to settle!” The engineer called from the window, his digi-cam pressed against the plexi-glass, capturing history. Leda felt a change in the vibration through her hands and knees.

“Here, take some of this,” Weston said and offered her a water ration, already punctured, she took a sip and swished it around her mouth, spat, then drained the rest of the pack. “Now some of this.” He uncapped his flask and took a draw, wiped his mouth and held the flask forward.

“I think I need something stronger,” Leda said as she took the flask and drank deeply. The grain distillation burned as it went down. She accepted the hand Weston offered to help her up. “This can’t be happening. Can it?”

Weston took the flask back and drank again before applying the cap. He replaced it in the cargo pocket he’d removed it from, gave it a pat, and said, “Thank you, Jim Beam,” He turned to the engineer. “You stay here and watch them. The rest of you come with us.”

Leda fell into step with him as he triggered the exit and moved out into the corridor. He reached the ladder to ground level and put a foot onto the rungs. As he lowered himself down he said, “I wonder what they use for fuel?”

“I don’t think they’re here for a fill-up, Merrill.” She said and started down once Weston reached the bottom. More buzz from his earpiece.

“It’s landed,” He said and turned to the cargo door for the airlock between it and them. “Vasily, go ahead and start easing those doors closed. Turn down the lights to something more comfortable. Boomer, how we doing up there?” He listened for a moment. “It is? Holy Jesus.” He looked up at Leda. “He says a panel just opened up in the side of the thing. Hurry.”

She reached ground level. Weston slotted his command card in the panel next to the door and it slowly started to rise. Leda ducked underneath and hustled to the small window in the door on the other side of the lock. Once the rest of the party was inside, the inner door closed and the outer door opened.

“Everyone stays calm,” Weston said as the seven humans formed a semi-circle in front of the alien vehicle. “Don’t make any sudden movements. Don’t try and talk to whatever comes out of there. Don’t do anything unless we tell you to.”

“The vibrating stopped,” Leda noticed, every sensation amplified by anxious nerves. A shape appeared in the open hatchway… a naked human, male, half a man with skinny arms dangling like a puppets, no genitals, nothing below the waist. A fresh scar drew a line down his belly-flesh, which sagged into his hollowed abdomen, an empty sack. “Christ and Allah.”

The man’s head and neck were encased in apparently a brown resin that formed a shell with cooked skin curling under the edges. It protected, Leda judged, the upper 1/3 of his body, everywhere except over his mouth, which slacked open. He was supported by something lifting the carapace from behind, a large shadow with several arms. By some function, the body of the things flashed rapidly in subdued colors, and then man and thing moved out of the vehicle into the bay.

“Vasily, are you getting this?” Weston whispered into his headset transmitter. A single buzz from his earpiece. From what they could see, the top part of the creature was rounded and filled with a viscous clear liquid like gel, seven arms protruded from the larger trunk that anchored it to the deck. One arm appeared to be jammed into the back of the carapace/hood over the man’s head; another held what might’ve been a bottle that was placed over his mouth. His lungs expanded.

“Do not fear,” The voice box screamed out as the bottle was removed. Leda gasped as she got a flash of what he’d endured… the light disappearing, the flashes of training and memory being burned out, personality stripped away until only a few basic capabilities remained… the tip of a tentacle arm shocking his white-gray linguistic nerves. The loudness of his voice modulated as gas was squeezed from his lungs. “We know your words. This con-ver-sion unit will speak.”

Leda and Weston exchanged looks of shock. Weston shrugged and nodded for her to respond to it. Leda took a half-step forward and said, “What are you?”

“We are real.”

“You are new,” Leda said and spread her arms slowly. “What are you here for? Are we at peace?”

The bottle was reapplied and the voice box’s lungs were refilled. “Give us sanct-u-ar-y.”

“Sanctuary from what?” Weston said as he found his voice. “Merciful Jesus.” He shirked and muttered a curse as the alien directed the voice box toward him.

“More.”

“More what?” Weston said as a trembling hand dug for his flask. “Christ and Allah. Don’t point that thing at me.”

“Us.”

“Why?” Leda said and the voice box was directed at her. The thing moved forward on a mollusk-like foot. In moments it stood before her and before she could react, an arm wrapped itself around her waist and delivered a shock, recoiling as soon as she fell to her knees.

Weston caught her in his arms as she slumped, lowered her to the deck, and said, “Are you all right? What happened?”

She shook her head to clear away the effects of the stun and found her balance again. “I’m not sure.” Leda looked at the alien and for the first time noticed a small point of intense white above the things bulbous head that seemed to bathe it in light.

“This unit will fail,” Voice box said after another hit from the gas-bottle. The Xeno/Human interface lagged over syllables in longer words. “This con-ver-sion unit,” the Xeno pointed the voice box at her. “She can hear.”

“What do you mean by that?” Leda said and immediately the white diamond above the thing’s head brightened. She felt her head aching, the worst migraine she’d ever had, and suddenly the words, YOU CAN HEAR boomed in her ears, writing itself across her mind’s eye. Leda clapped her hands over her ears, eyes watering. She cried out as she looked to the others. She appeared to be the only one affected. “I can hear you!”

The pain dissipated as contact was broken.

“We will pay.” The voice box groaned out.

“With what?” Leda said and wiped her eyes. She took the hand Weston offered and he pulled her up. The arm with the gas canister swung out, then back.

“The bridge.”

***

SOL-5/ Jupiter

The official date of completion for ADF Nereid was stamped on a brass plate hanging over the next hatch toward the bridge. 25 January 2191, but much work remained to be done, she noticed. Panels throughout the ship were being opened and the circuit boards inside them checked.

“You came in as a full lieutenant?” Jena said as the ship’s executive officer, a stocky man in his late 20’s named Boris, guided her toward the bridge through the conduits in Nereid’s busy interior. “How’s that? It took me two years just to get out of Ensign.”

“I graduated in the middle of my class,” He said over his shoulder as pushed off from a handhold and drifted forward. “My scores weren’t good enough for fleet so when the ADF recruiter came calling I jumped at the chance. I hear Avalon is nice, except for the winters, but I can deal with that. The captain they hired is being a shit about his contract and hasn’t signed on yet. I’ve kind of been pulling double duty.”

“How soon can you work me into the watch schedule?” Jena said. Boris had red, tired eyes and stank of too much time in the same pressure suit. He looked strained.

“Immediately,” Boris said and barked at a work-party goldbricking in a side conduit. “You there… where’s your section leader?”

“Here, sir,” A pudgy woman with her dark hair in a bun raised her hand. “We were just coordinating on the line-fault that keeps popping up in the atmospheric control system. Sorry, sir.”

“Talking about it won’t solve the problem,” Boris said and the section leader dropped her eyes to the deck. “Get back to work.”

“Yes, sir,” The woman said as Boris turned away. “You heard the man. Let’s move it out.” The work-party floated past in single file.

The pressure suits of the ADF were blue, contrasting the gray she wore, the ADF crew turned as the passed to check out her patches, stitched onto the back of her pressure suit in two rows between her shoulders; SDB-211 Ganymede, HCN-22 Constellation, OAS Mordicai, HQ- CINC-SOL/Elysium Holdfast. Jena heard a sharp intake of breath from behind her before someone muttered “Constellation Connie.”

“Sorry about that,” Boris said and pushed off again. “The ADF consulate sent me a specific timeline. These people just don’t seem to understand how much we need to get done.”

“I understand,” Jena said and pushed off to trail him. “Just give me a checklist and I’ll get started wherever you need me.”

“The data-links between our bridge stations and the mainframe need calibrating for starters, the navigation system needs to be debugged and uploaded with current positions, the RCS control needs error-checked… that’s just the things I can think of. I’m sure the list is much longer. We have to make a good impression on the Captain, whoever he is, when he finally gets here.”

“I’m it, at least until all this is over,” Jena said and slowed herself to maneuver around an open panel with a pair of legs sticking out of it. “Did Home Fleet talk to you?”

“They told me that they were enacting the Sol Defense Support Protocols or some smleck,” Boris said. “The gist of it was that an emergency condition exits in Sol system whereas any allied ship can be taken under local command. I looked it up and checked with our rep. It’s fine,” He grinned a toothy smile at her. “You just have to sign for it.”

“No problem,” Jena said and laughed. “If I break it, Fleet will cover the fix.”

“Right, right. No problem,” Boris said with a snort. “Now would you mind explaining what the hell is going on out there?”

“Boris, you’re not gonna believe it.”

***

Sol-8/Neptune

News of the event expanded outward at the speed of light. Jupiter got the news first, and then Mars, the first ship to respond was OAS Vassuda. Weston was forced to restart more of the facility to accommodate expected visitors. The UN arrived next with a team from twenty nations. SOLCorp sent arbiters. Every news network sent cameras. Cutter was in contact.

“You’ve done an excellent job. The public reaction is mixed. There’s a lot of fear but also a lot of curiosity about the event. Whatever you do, don’t let them make any declarations or make any deals until we can get some people there. We can’t be last in the action when it comes to this. We have people on the way.”

Leda lay on her air mattress bed and put a cold-pack on her forehead as she listened as Cutter continued transmitting on their secure line.

“In the meantime, find out who’s there and send me a list of names, we’ll do some checks. Don’t let any of them talk to the Xeno without an arbiter around. Once the reception team arrives, they’ll instruct you from there. If you have any questions, include them in your report. We expect it in twenty-four hours.”

“What’s there to tell you?” Leda said and shifted the cold-pack to the spot just below her hairline where the Xeno psi-link went through. “All that’s changed since last report is that I think they’re what we consider to be scientists… the closest thing I can describe is a series of images of them working on machines of some sort. There’s still no other indication of why they’re here… but at least we’re communicating. Learning the first symbol of their written code took me almost a day. There are three hundred of them. Each can have one meaning or a dozen meanings. It hurts less to learn now, though. It feels like a muscle you haven’t used in a while the day after a hard workout… you get sore. The station commander is pretty quick, and he’s good for keeping all the reception staffs occupied. The Xenos are patient. When I can’t take anymore and leave, it just goes back into the egg and waits until I come back. The voice-box gave out a while ago. Thank God. That thing was making me sick.”

She rolled off the bed and staggered toward the water closet in her underwear. There was a bottle of headache caplets behind the mirror. She took two and washed them down with a water ration.

“Their ship hasn’t changed orbit and every so often the Xeno takes the egg back there. I think they sent different beings in a few times, just to see if I’d notice, call it a hunch. The psi-link feels different with some but they all sound the same. They use holo-forms to demonstrate what the symbols look like. They explain to me what they mean. I guess that’s all.”

Leda crumpled the ration pack and pitched it into a waste disposal chute. She tripped over her own shoes as she returned to bed, but soon had eyes closed with a pillow under her head. They blearily opened when the reply from Earth arrived fifteen minutes later, a snooze alarm, she reasoned… but she needed all she could get. Even her toenails felt exhausted. Eyes closed, she pawed for the “record” button on the transmitter console Weston had set up for her use. She found the correct toggle by touch and flipped it on.

“That thing,” Cutter responded by satellite relay. “Was one of our best pilots.”

***

Sol-5/Jupiter

The bridge compartment, built to hold ten people comfortably, held five, each person with a separate list. That she was adjutant to the NorCom CINC-SOL proved a difficult hurdle to overcome in the relationship she tried to develop with the ADF crew. Tensions lessened when she started to pitch in, she made it obvious she was there to get Nereid operational instead of tearing rank. Kinkaid, in his latest instructions, directed her to meet with the shipyard management and tear them something else. Too many projects were behind schedule.

“Number twenty-three-ten, fuel turbo-pump on.” Jena said, sitting in the captain’s chair… her chair… and touched a line on her data pad screen, item #2310 of 5000. Nereid was catching up in a hurry.

“Fuel turbo-pump on.” Bosun Lan, the ADF crewman Boris assigned to assist her, shouted from the tactical station just below. Jena entered a frequency into her command-link.

“Yard control, this is November Delta. Radio check… sound off if you can hear me.” Jena said. Holographic projectors mounted in a dome around the captain’s chair created a third-eye view; she could see a graphic representation of the Nereid and its place in a square of space 800 kilometers in any directions. The shipyard opened a channel to reply but all she got back was static. “Say again, all we got from you was feedback. How copy?” She raised the hologram dome and looked down at Lan. “What happened?”

“Diagnostics says that we lost their signal. We only got about fifteen degrees of track before the dish froze up,” Lan said and made a note on the diagnostics board. “We had a lock and then,” He snapped his fingers. “We got nothing. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s on their end.”

Jena considered the problem. “Boost power to the signal capture field and reset the dish. Put it on the list for Gibbons when he comes back in for another recharge.”

“Done.” Lan said. In what had become an endurance marathon, Bosun Gibbons, the ship’s damage control officer and EVA specialist, was scaling Nereid’s gray hull in a hardened spacesuit; repairing connections, sealing leaks, and bonding tiles of RAM armor onto places they were missing.

“This is yard control. We read you.”

“We need departure clearance and a shipyard pilot to take us out, the interference is gone,” She said and locked the channel out of the comm-array. “Keep doing whatever you’re doing.”

“Did not copy, November Delta… please say again.” The yard called back.

Jena turned in the chair and yelled down to Lan. “Reset the dish!” She put her head into the holo-dome and turned the chair until she could see the Free Europa administration spindle. “This is November Delta, requesting a yard pilot and departure authorization.”

“Your departure window opens in two watch cycles. The yard pilot will arrive via shuttle before it begins, over.”

“I need transport to Administration. How soon can it be here?” Jena said curtly. Adm. Kinkaid had impressed upon her that, in dealing with the corporate management, she was to be treated as he would be. She took her finger off the transmitter switch. Number twenty-three-eleven, booster fan on.”

“Booster fan on, check.” Lan called back. The yard controller was less prompt.

“Number twenty-three twelve, run fuel line test.” Jena said.

“Fuel line test running, check.”

“Shuttle is en-route to you,” The yard controller, a different, older-sounding man responded. “Our apologies for the delay. The meeting you requested has been approved and will convene on your arrival.”

Jena smiled at that and said, “The fleet thanks you. Out.” She found her data pad floating where she’d left it. “Number twenty-three thirteen, enter approval code into command node to allow presets.”

“Lieutenant Boris is the only one who knows it.” Lan said.

“We’ll come back to it,” Jena said and dropped #2313 into a separate file for line items requiring a more intensive review. “That wipes out the next series. Let’s start again at twenty-three-fifty.”

“Hey commandant, lemme ask you something,” Len said, interrupting her. “I never been to Mars. What was it like?”

“Like dust and a thousand different, cheap, perfumes.”

Lan’s reply was interrupted by someone, a communications officer with a headset on, who had turned ashen. He took off the headset and looked around the room for Lt. Boris. He met Jena’s eyes and said, “There’s something going on around Neptune. It’s… it’s impossible.”

***

Delta Pavonis

Hurricane drew a sip of water out of the drinking tube in his mask and visually swept the space from the nose of his fighter to its right wingtip. Delta Pavonis, over the last two hours of flight, had grown progressively larger. It was now the size of a grape and the front of his canopy was gradually turning opaque to protect his vision from the intensity of the star. The Festung 21 depot orbiting at 2 AU, was still hidden visually by the sun’s glare but was an identifiable wobble on the gravitational inferometer.

Engine off, Thunderbird drifted the navigation marker in his monocle, inside the cockpit Hurricane tried to calm his nerves with music from his great-great-grandfather’s time. That old Hogan had seen action in an USAF bomber over Tripoli and lived, but not as long as his musical tastes. Who was Van Halen? What was Diver Down? Hurricane laughed at what he thought it meant as music squealed though his helmet, a solo guitar.