Lost Ark Ch. 01

"By now most of you, I'm sure, will already be benefitting from the advancements made by Bauer Medical. You're my neighbors, my friends, and I want to make your lives as long and full of ease as possible."

Kyle reached over Sloane's shoulder, tapping the screen to pause the video. "Look," he said, pointing to the background of the image. "See how the back of the room curves up slightly? This video was shot in a habitat ring. Had to be right here."

"Stop! I want to see this," Sloane said. She batted Kyle's hand away and resumed the video.

The speaker hopped from the table and began to pace, gesturing emphatically as if unable to contain his own energy. "I don't need to tell you who I am, but I'll bet plenty of you are curious about the early days of this project. Let me start by introducing you to the team."

As the man began his introductions Sloane studied him. He looked to be five foot six, or at most five-seven, but what he lacked in height he made up for in strength. His biceps practically burst from his short-sleeved shirt, and veins stood out prominently on his neck. Thick brown hair was cropped close on the sides but left a touch longer on top. His eyes were restless, rarely staring into the camera for long, but sweeping side to side as if engaging with an unseen audience. Sloane was transfixed.

"-and this is Doctor Nkosi, our head of developmental neurology. I'm proud of this team, what we've already accomplished, and what I know we will over the next two years. But I didn't assemble so many great minds to pose in front of the camera." At this point the man turned to the others gathered behind him. "Get to work," he laughed, then turned back to face the front. "In the next installment, you'll get a look at the team in action."

Kyle spoke from behind her. "I like it when someone says they don't need an introduction but you have no idea who they are."

"I think it might be Bauer himself," Lissa said. She ran her fingers through her hair, rearranging the platinum blonde spikes.

"Bauer the shipbuilder?"

"No," Lissa said slowly, her eyes still locked on the video. "Shell was the shipbuilder. Bauer was an investor."

"What did he do after the Ark mission? I mean, did he keep investing in space?"

"Hold on." Lissa tore her eyes from the terminal's screen and popped open her datapad. In the frantic hours leading up to the mission she had downloaded as much background material as was available on the Ark mission, alongside a sizable archive of Earth history. "That's odd."

"What is?" Kyle asked.

"After Ark he doesn't show up again."

"Did he avoid the media?"

Lissa snorted. "Hardly. In the years prior to the mission he's everywhere. He posted heavily on social media, attended events, shareholder meetings, and was in the news. Looks like he changed girlfriends every couple of years. Oh, yes!" She waved Kyle over. "It's him. Here's a photo taken two years before Ark."

In the photo, a compact man dressed in a tuxedo posed on a red carpet. That it was the same man from the video was clear, but Lissa immediately picked up on two differences. The first was his hair. Bauer, in the video, had thick hair, even if it had been cut short. The man on the red carpet had longer but thinning hair which left exposed a good patch of his forehead.

Kyle articulated the other difference. "Looks like the dude got a gym membership somewhere in there."

Lissa nodded. Despite the flattering cut of the tux, Bauer clearly had a slim physique. But in the video he was admirably muscular.

"Nice arm candy, too," Kyle added.

Is he fucking with me? The young woman posing alongside Bauer could hardly have been more different from Lissa. Whereas Lissa was tall and slender, the woman in the photo was petite and curvy, her glittering dress cut deep to highlight ample cleavage. And in stark contrast to Lissa's spiky blonde hair, Bauer's date had lustrous black locks pulled behind her neck, long enough to reappear at her waist. Lissa had to admit she was beautiful, with an air of unapologetic sexuality. "Is that what you like now?"

Kyle, perhaps realizing his gaffe, drew back. "A lot of guys would like that. Anyway, it kinda looks like he stowed away on his own ship."

It did look that way. Lissa performed another search against the archive but turned up nothing after the launch of Ark I. And Kyle was right about the setting for the video; the curvature of the room where the video was shot strongly suggested it was in a ring habitat. Bauer and a group of scientists had been aboard Ark I, and there was no record of any of them in the four hundred years since.

***

-Kyle-

They slept in the cramped room. Danton noticed that Lissa, who had been so restless, began to yawn. After little sleep the previous night, the frenetic mission preparation, and the long flight, both were overdue for a rest. Awkwardly, the two settled into bunks less than a meter apart.

Sleep didn't come easily. The habitat ring made a dozen different sounds, from air vents blowing, the churn of water in pipes, and the soft clicks of motion-activated lights switching off. He looked at Lissa, who seemed to have fallen asleep swiftly. Her familiar form was outlined under the bed covers, slim hips, long legs, and a chest softly rising and falling with breath. Danton felt a sudden pang of loneliness. Unwanted memories found him. There were visions of nights spent with Lissa, their bodies entwined. Once they had snuck out of the camp and made love under the light of the planet's two moons. Afterward, Lissa had fallen asleep in his arms, the rhythmic sounds of her breathing an echo of what he was hearing now. Her closeness taunted him, a reminder of what he had lost, how horny and lonely he had become. There was nothing to do about it. Danton turned away, willing himself to sleep, hoping the memories didn't pursue him into his dreams.

"Can I flush?" Lissa asked the next morning. Or at least it felt like morning. The habitat had a twenty-four-hour simulation mode which dimmed the lights around bedtime and restored them when the occupants woke.

"The water and sewer system ran a diagnostic when I powered it on yesterday," Danton replied. "Be my guest."

Unconvinced, Lissa tapped the 'flush' button on the toilet before quickly darting back. Danton, who was waiting outside the room, heard the familiar and comforting sound of a flush toilet activating. "Score one for four hundred-year-old plumbing!"

The explorers descended to the ring's outer level, the tug of gravity taking full effect. Nor was that the only difference. The upper level had been strictly utilitarian, with cold metal floors, exposed ductwork and wiring, and no decoration apart from directional signs. The level they had now descended to was nothing like it. The flooring was non-slip, as was advisable in any space habitat, but was patterned like an Egyptian carpet and was subtly yielding. Though in disarray, the furniture was heavy and richly upholstered, of a finer grade even than the chairs and sofas which the Odysseus officers' quarters carried. But what Danton noticed most of all was the artwork. The walls were loaded with a combination of display panels, batiks, and paintings.

"Bauer didn't fuck around," Lissa said, craning her neck to take in the scene.

"No, he didn't," Danton agreed. "I think this is where that video was recorded."

"It is. Look, that's the table where- fuck! What is that thing?"

Lissa's startled gasp jolted Danton. Like her, he took a step back before peering around the end of a sofa to look for whatever had been so startling. The device looked like a robotic crab, propelled on six legs, with two claws waving in the front. He took another instinctive step back before realizing what it must be.

"Hey, hold on," Danton said. He reached into a pocket before finding and tossing out a crumb from the energy bar he had eaten for breakfast. The machine immediately turned, skittered to the crumb, and sucked it up using a hidden vacuum.

"First job it's had in four hundred years," Lissa said with a relieved sigh.

"I'm not so sure about that," Danton said. Something about the place unnerved him. The odor that had greeted them early on had disappeared after several hours of the air handlers running, but the memory of it stayed with him. Beneath the dust and staleness, there had been a more pungent scent, like rot. And the room itself had a disconcerting feel. Much of the furniture had been knocked over or turned at odd angles, making Danton wonder if some sort of conflict had played out here.

"How did you think he did it?" Lissa asked, breaking Danton's reverie.

"Did what?"

"Got himself and his team on board."

Danton had given the question some thought the night before as he struggled to find sleep. "I think that's the entire reason he partnered with the Shell shipyard. He wasn't diversifying, he was gaining access to the construction of Ark I. He supplemented the cost of the mission by having the habitat built to his specification. It would have saved Shell and the Alliance billions."

"They would happily have looked the other way, I suppose."

"That's what I'm thinking. Bauer could have arranged his own shuttles, construction crews, and security. By the time Ark I launched, he and his team had probably been on board for months."

The side of the room opposite them contained two doors, each of which led into a corridor. Danton peered into the one on the right. "Looks like lab space."

Lissa inspected the other. "This one I can't tell. More bunk space maybe. Let's split up."

Worry tugged at Danton. "I don't like it," he said. "Let's stay together, Lissa."

Stiffening, Lissa turned to face him squarely. "This is my mission, Kyle. You look at the labs. I want to see if there are any more video logs. I'll be right around the fucking corner."

Danton watched her go. "The hell?" he muttered, before turning away.

The first room off of the right-hand corridor was definitely lab space. There was a row of medical-grade freezers, a clunky machine labeled as a gene sequencer, and a rack stuffed with blade servers. Whatever research had been done here required considerable computing power. The machines were crude by Alliance standards but at the time would have been state of the art.

Danton poked around fruitlessly, but if that room contained nothing else of interest, the next one certainly did. In it, situated to either side of the room, were two hospital beds. Both were upholstered with easy to clean synthetic fabrics and raised as if for conducting examinations. Curiously, at the head of each bed, an elaborate helmet-like device lay, connected by a sheath of wires to a computer at the end of the room. The devices looked like a combination electroencephalogram and virtual reality headset.

The monitor at the end of the room woke at Danton's touch. From the menu he selected 'Table A'. A set of options appeared:

Cognitive mapping check: Skye

Cognitive mapping check: Amber

Cognitive mapping check: Rod

Unmap and Restart

"Whaaaat the hell." Danton gave the beds a second look, noticing that restraining straps were tidily fastened at several points along each bed. The room reminded him more of a 19th century asylum than a medical facility. He moved on before the room began to feel creepier than it already was.

If the previous two rooms had seemed narrow in purpose, the room beyond defied categorization. Just inside was an oversized, glass enclosed shower, surprisingly large for a space habitat. A shelf held basic toiletries, and a rack of plain but seemingly clean towels was stacked just outside. After Kyle examined one of the towels, another of the crab-like robots darted over to smoothe it back into place.

Another resort-grade amenity occupied the left side of the room. The massive bed was raised so that one could only reach it by stepping first onto a platform. It had been made up with tasteful linens and a carefully arranged line of pillows. A large screen was hung over the wood headboard. "Why couldn't we have slept here last night?" Danton muttered.

But by far the most intriguing feature of the room was a series of fat, horizontal tubes arranged side by side along the far wall. Each was roughly two and a half meters long and a meter in diameter. They were heavily-built objects, resting on metal legs and connected at each end with pipes and wire bundles which disappeared into the wall. They were undecorated except for a display panel on top. The first two panels reported the same, disturbing message:

Amber: Nonviable

A chill shot through Danton. Amber was one of the names from the previous room's system, but why were there two tanks with her name? And what, exactly, wasn't viable? Then it struck him. Tanks! These were the tanks that were listed among the habitat's primary systems, the one system that had been left fully powered on. Why were they more important than water and heat?

Still puzzling over the question, Danton approached the next tank. Its display read:

Skye: Physiology 100%, neurology 22%, programming complete. Age 21, viable.

It was research, Danton realized. The cargo manifest for Ark I had mentioned something called a research bundle. While Bauer had obviously been able to hide the human presence in the habitat, he and his team had conducted research during Ark I's mission. But what, exactly? When Danton touched the panel to brush away some dust, its message immediately changed.

Cluster activated: Five (5) tanks

Skye: Hatching

"Shit! What?" Danton pulled back, but something was already happening with the tank. A chime went off, and there was a quick hiss of gas being released. Again the tank's display panel changed. The lights in the shower enclosure popped on.

Hatching: Immersion fluid recovery

"Shit, shit," Danton repeated. He jabbed at the panel but it no longer responded to his touch. Instead, the display panel quickly shot through a series of messages.

Hatching: Immersion fluid recovered

Hatching: Nutrient tubes detached

Hatching: Monitoring harness detached

Hatching: Programming rig detached

The tank hissed again, as a seam appeared along one side and both ends. The hinged tank opened like a clamshell, revealing its contents: a young woman, naked, and dripping with orange fluid. Danton's head swam with surprise and alarm.

Hatching: Respiratory stimuli

"Hawwwwuhk!" the woman sat abruptly upright, retched out a lungful of the same viscous orange fluid, coughed, and drew in a ragged breath. Her eyes popped open.

"Oh fuck!" Danton gasped. He was torn between revulsion and a desire to help the obviously distressed woman. He took a step forward. What could he do for her? How was she even alive? "Are you okay?"

The woman turned his way with unseeing eyes. Long, dark brown hair was slicked against her skin in a heavy tangle. She drew in another difficult breath, coughed out more of the orange fluid, and kicked her legs over the edge of the tank. Large eyes swept the room vacantly, seeming to take in everything but see nothing. Then she spotted the shower, now illuminated much brighter than the rest of the sprawling room.

"Oh," she said, the effort of speaking the single syllable drawing forth another wet cough. The woman slid from the tank, first lowering her feet to the floor, then taking a tentative step. While Danton hovered indecisively the recently-awoken woman staggered toward the shower, almost falling, but with each step getting steadier.

"Lissa," Danton hissed into his communicator. "Lissa, come back around this way. Third room. This is so fucked up!"

The woman pulled herself into the shower and fumbled at the fixture. Soon she was being bathed by a sparkling stream of water, turning her body slowly under its touch. "Ohhh," she repeated, this time drawing the sound out from one of dull recognition to one of enjoyment.

What Danton saw next was nothing less than a transformation. The woman from the tank turned slowly under the water, rinsing away the orange fluid from her skin and hair. She stretched, twisting under the stream, and smiling as if no sensation had ever been as blissful. Once the last of the orange fluid had rinsed away she took a small bottle from the shelf of toiletries and began to shampoo her hair. Arms raised, she slowly massaged the shampoo against her scalp, from time to time letting out a small, pleasured sound.

Danton's initial feelings of shock and confusion subsided. The woman, whoever she was, appeared to be healthy. And not just that, he realized; she had an incredible body. She was petite, but with an hourglass figure, full breasts, and round hips. While not particularly long, her legs were toned and shapely.

As the young woman showered she began to look around more, seemingly aware of the world beyond the shower enclosure for the first time. Once her eyes found Danton she kept them on him, a confident smile on her face while she ran her hands along her ripe body, slowly soaping then rinsing. When she finished, the young woman stepped from the shower and began to towel off, her eyes still locked on his.

A jolt of arousal shot through Danton. He couldn't recall ever meeting anyone so bold, a stranger so flagrantly seductive. She seemed to give no thought to the odd surroundings or her recent awakening. Her eyes were hungry, staying fixed on him while she rubbed her body with scented oil. Where the fuck is Lissa? Danton wondered, no longer certain he wanted her to show up.

"Hi," she said sweetly, stepping toward him. "I'm Skye."

"Ahhhh, hi," Danton stammered. "I'm Kyle. Are you okay?"

"Mmm," the young woman said, her eyes sweeping over Kyle's body. "It was naughty of you to wake me, Kyle." She placed her hands on the tops of her thighs then drew them upward as she spoke. "I was having the most delicious dream." She took another step closer.

"I'm sorry," Kyle said earnestly. "I didn't mean-"

"Oh, it's okay silly man." As Skye's hands reached her breasts she tugged and lifted them before letting them drop. She giggled, as if pleasantly surprised how buoyant they were. "But now you have to do something nice for me."

"Okay, sure."

Skye took another step forward. She stood on her toes, aiming her lips toward the side of Danton's face. He caught a whiff of the exotic, spicy scent she had rubbed herself with. When he leaned down to meet her, she whispered in his ear. "You have to fuck me."

Danton realized he was already hard, the result of Skye's all out seduction attempt. There seemed to be no explanation for it. How was it possible that this beautiful woman, a stranger fifteen years younger than him and fresh from some variety of medical sleep, was interested in sex at all, much less with him?

A small hand found his cock. Cooing softly and with her voluptuous body pressed against his, Skye began stroking Danton's organ through his flight suit, inspecting its dimensions. "Mmm," she said. "You're a big boy, aren't you Kyle? Naughty, and big."

I'm overthinking this, Danton thought. He was still young, healthy, and hard. It had been a month since he'd had sex, and the previous evening spent so close to Lissa had only fueled his lust. Skye was merely thankful for being rescued. Risking your life on a hastily-planned mission to a derelict spaceship surely earned a little fun. He bent to kiss Skye but she twisted away.

"C'mere," she said, playfully. The brunette sauntered toward the bed, wiggling her hips and looking back over her shoulder to make sure Danton was watching. Once she reached the mattress, she flopped onto her back and hung her head over the edge. "C'mere and fuck my mouth." The brunette traced a finger across her soft lips to clarify the point. She parted them invitingly.