by Z D Dean
Holy fuck the UFO was real. What have I gotten myself into?
As the two approached, a now taken aback Zade, the blue one was wearing an almost human scowl, and the green one seemed to have lost a couple of shades from the fright. While the two closed with the window, Zade moved back into his room realizing that, given the conditions, it was probably more of a cell. The obviously rattled green creature knocked on the glass and pointed to the small device on the table next to the bed. After looking at it and returning his gaze on the creature, it motioned for Zade to place the device in his ear. Zade crossed his arms and shook his head, both out of fear and stubbornness.
Zade heard the click of an intercom in his room, the creature begins talking again, this time Zade however could only hear its incomprehensible words. After clicking the intercom off the blue creature leaned over a computer, punched a few keys and video of a UN conference began playing in the top right corner of the window. After a few seconds of watching the video, the green creature pointed to the device on the table again, but instead of motioning for Zade to put it in his ear he pointed to the video where a circle appears around the translator headsets that the delegates were wearing. Back and forth the creature alternated between pointing to the device and to the video.
Realizing what it must be, Zade questioned, “It’s a translator?” Not expecting a response. To his surprise both creatures nodded their heads in unison. After picking up the device, Zade slowly turned it over in his hand examining it. This elicited some conversation between the two outside the room. The device looked harmless enough, almost like an early model Bluetooth headset. Relegating himself to the fact that if the creatures wanted him dead or wanted to cut him up for science they would have already done it, and hoping any experiments were already complete, Zade shoved the earpiece in his left ear. To his surprise nothing bad happened. The intercom clicked on again.
“Mr. US Army, I am Jorloss the medical doctor and head of biological research on this ship. Are you comfortable?” The green one queries.
“Well I could use a drink, and a pair of pants. Especially if your blue friend is going to keep staring at me.” This immediately brought the scowl back to the face of the blue thing.
“This is the captain of this ship, her name is Samix. Do not be worried, we mean you no harm. She is simply trying to determine if you are a threat to us. What is it that you would like to drink?”
“Well I’m assuming that bourbon and rum are out of he question so some water would be nice. How are we coming along on clothes? I’m not a shy man but I feel that mankind’s first contact with aliens should be done clothed.”
“Mr. US Army if you turn around you will see a small compartment next to the door. There is a bottle of water and a set of our ship uniform.” This time it was Samix who spoke.
With that Zade spun around toward a soft hissing sound from the back of his cell. A small compartment about the size of a microwave had opened by the door to his cell. In it was two bottles of water and a neatly folded black set of fatigues with matching boots. Zade first grabbed a bottle of water, opened it, and smelled it ensuring that it didn’t have anything strange in it. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to smell anything, but given the circumstance figured it couldn’t hurt. After taking a small sip to ensure it tasted ok, Zade drained the bottle. Next Zade took the uniform and boots to the bed, carefully unfolding each piece of clothing, checking it for anything strange before dawning it. Just as Zade finished tying and blousing his last boot, he heard movement behind him. Grabbing the second bottle of water Zade turned to find a chair facing the window had appeared.
“If you are satisfied, can you sit down? We have some questions.” Samix said over the intercom.
“Well I have, never in my life, been satisfied, but I do have some questions myself. The most important of which is where am I? With a runner up of, why do you keep calling me Mr. US Army? Rounding out the pack with, where is my equipment and why didn’t you give me my uniform?” Zade said as he took a seat.
“Our location will be covered in due time. Your equipment is in another lab being analyzed, and your uniform was recycled due to its unserviceable condition. Is US Army not your name? We have been collecting and analyzing data from your species and found that the warrior class in your society puts their name on their uniforms. US Army was what was written on your uniform.” Samix said.
Although slightly disturbing, everything Samix had said was correct. The army only issues three uniforms per soldier for a deployment. By default, one has to remain unworn and saved for the flight back stateside. Meaning that two uniforms have to survive for twelve months of patrolling. Since it had been a busy deployment and Zade decided to become an astronaut on the last day, the uniform he was wearing was pretty much rags. Zade also lost a couple of nametapes during the deployment and by the end had to take the one off his uniform and put it on his kit every time he geared up. Meaning the only tape on his uniform when Samix and her crew captured him was his US Army tape.
“Your right about the names but our uniforms have two different patches. One patch is for the organization we belong to, the other is our name. Mine must have fallen off when you captured me. My name is Alex Zade.”
Samix recoiled as if she had been slapped, “Captured you! We wanted nothing to do with your class 2 species. You moved on our ship and got hung up on the side when we tried to break contact. If you are now comfortable, it is time for you to explain why you touched my ship Alex.”
Alex, with tension easing and curiosity growing, began explaining the events leading up to his interaction with the ship.
“I am an officer in the United States army. The US is the most technologically advanced and dominate society on the planet and as such has become the main target for a religious extremist group who wish to destroy anything that disagrees with their ‘god’. Through fear and egregious violence directed towards innocents this group has been trying to gain a foothold and influence the world. Although military action is only being conducted against the extremists, many heads of state are beginning to realize that all who follow this religious mindset are potential threats to mankind. These extremists operated out of the area where you landed your ship. In an attempt to quarantine the extremists, the United States has been engaging the enemy in that area for the past sixteen years. Our base noticed strange lights and activity coming from your landing site, so my men and I were sent out to investigate. Because the enemy regularly tries to blend in with the populace of the country and use innocent civilians as a deterrent for the use of force, we felt the need to further investigate the projection you ship had created. Our forces call the vehicles you were using as camouflage, Jingle Trucks, and speaking from personal experience, are used regularly by the extremists to cause chaos. Many times, they will pack these vehicles with explosives than detonate them in front of non-combatant targets such as schools and hospitals, in an attempt to erode the will of US fighters. Because of this, I chose to further investigate, what I now know was your ship. Once I got close, I couldn’t move and lost consciousness shortly after sustaining what felt like a severe electric shock.”
It took almost two hours, periodically digressing to elaborate on certain details that Samix was unclear on. By the end the demeanors of the two outside the glass had visibly softened and became less suspicious. Time, Zade though, well spent. Upon completion of his rendition of events, Zade was given food, which he ate while watching Samix and Jorloss discussing and trying to confirm the validity of Zade’s story. After an hour of watching Samix and Jorloss working on their computer systems, Zade retired to his bed for some shut eye.
There’s nothing I can do stuck in here, so I should stay fresh. I’m sure they will bother me if they need something.
∆∆∆
After Zade finished his story Samix turned off the intercom while Jorloss instructed the ship to provide nutrition to Zade. Jorloss being an expert in biology and not technology began sorting through all of the unenc
rypted data and news feeds that the ship captured while around Earth, in an attempt to confirm the geopolitical situation that Zade had explained in his story. Meanwhile, at the computer station adjacent to Jorloss’ Samix began digging through the records, public and encrypted to find information on an Alex Zade. Looking for anything that would suggest that Zade was a threat, the first system Samix infiltrated was the US Army personnel data system. There she found a military record file for one Alex Zade.
Zade’s personnel file confirmed exactly what he had said. He was an officer in the US Army who was currently on orders to Afghanistan. Samix didn’t notice any anomalies in Zade’s file when she compared it to the files of his peers, with the exception of some extensive mental health and personality screenings that were conducted just prior to Zade’s most recent deployment. The last two entries in the file were the most intriguing to Samix. The first, dated at the time of mental evaluation completion, simply said “Cleared for Deployment.” The second, dated two days prior to the incident, said, “Upon completion of mental health and physical capabilities analysis recommend admittance in Phoenix program. High probability of success.” Followed by a stamp that simply read USSECDEF. After further digging Samix found out that the Phoenix project was a classified program where the US consolidated its best warriors and trained them to take on extremely high-risk operations.
We have been having problems on this ship that the SSILF haven’t been able to handle. With one crewmember bedridden and another lost to indigenous forces, having a capable warrior aboard might not be the worst idea. Zade might be useful.
Jorloss began speaking to Samix jarring her from her train of thought.
“Everything I have researched seems to confirm his story.” Jorloss said.
“Mine too, but he is one of the best warriors in a class 2 species. He could become a threat if we release him.”
“I know we have safety protocols to deal with a situation like this, I think we give him the treatment and let him go. Plus, if we let him out of this isolation chamber, he won’t be bothering me while I work up here. Samix we are a science vessel; we are not equipped to maintain prisoners.”
“He was given the treatment when I brought him onboard, otherwise his wounds would have killed him. Jorloss I am going to tell him our side of the events, and I want you to monitor his vitals. Any spikes to indicate aggressive behavior, he stays in iso. If he does not react poorly, we will give him a batch of nanites programmed to disable him at the first sign of threatening behavior, release him from iso and let him stay in one of the extra room’s in the crew quarters until we can drop him off back on his planet.”
“How are you going to get him to agree to receive the nanites? I will not force them upon him, I am a doctor not a deranged experimenter.”
“Jorloss, to him, we appear as a big scary bunch of aliens. He must think we are technologically advanced far beyond that of his own species’ capacity. I will just make up a description and purpose for the nanites.”
“I don’t like this. If he finds out we lied to him, he is going to be a problem.”
“Jorloss I am the captain of this ship, and that was an order which you will obey.”
∆∆∆
Zade had been laying down trying to doze off for almost an hour. With complete disregard for his cavalier mindset, Zade’s body would not relax enough to let him sleep, the situation was simply too strange. Zade sat up and moved to sit in the chair as soon as he heard the intercom click to life.
“Captain Zade we have confirmed your story and in return will tell you our side of the events.” Samix’s said, voice ringing through the small cell from the intercom speaker.
“That would be appreciated. I think your records must be wrong though, I am only a first lieutenant.”
“You may have been a first lieutenant when you came aboard this ship, but while searching through your personnel file, it was noted that you had ‘made the list.’ You were going to be promoted when you left Afghanistan, which according to the ship’s calculations, would have happened three days ago on your world.”
With that Samix dove into the events that had brought Zade and the crew up to that point. Samix’s species was the founder of an intragalactic conglomeration known as the Unity. The Unity consists of approximately fifty different species who all call the galaxy, known by mankind as Hoag’s Object, home. Samix’s people, the Xi’ga, mastered intragalactic travel hundreds of years ago, but only recently developed the capability of intergalactic travel. The ship that Zade was on was called the XES01, or Experimental Exploration Ship number 1. It was one of only three ships created, with the capability of deep space travel, and was tasked with exploring and cataloging galaxies. The crew of the XES01 were tasked with testing the range capabilities of the ship, and thus were assigned a galaxy that was 600,000,000 light years away from their home galaxy, the Milky Way.
One unique aspect of the XES01 was, since it would need to be self-sufficient during the long flights away from civilized space, that it was equipped with a material reclamation system. This system broke waste objects down into their core elements than used the supply of different elements to create items required for the crew and ship’s survival. Upon entering the Earth’s arm of the Milky Way, the ship had completely depleted its supply of iron, forcing the crew to begin searching for a planet or asteroid rich in iron to resupply at. By sheer luck, the ship had been traveling within 200 light years of Earth and began picking up radio transmissions. Assuming that any species capable of creating radio waves, could utilize iron, and thus must inhabit an iron rich planet, Samix ordered the ship to go to the source of the transmissions. By following the radio waves as they got stronger, the XES01 found earth and began a high orbit.
While orbiting one of the scientists onboard determined that there was a large iron deposit close to the surface in the mountainous area where Zade found the ship. As the ship descended through the thick nitrogen rich atmosphere of Earth, a malfunction caused the loss of main power. On emergency power the ship was only able to run the cloaking device, which could project an image thus hiding the ship. In this case it was the image of some vehicles that were native to the area. Sometime between landing and regaining main power, Zade and his men stumbled upon the disabled craft. When the ship regained main power, sensors came back online. As the sensor image resolved on Samix’s command screen, she saw that her ship had been surrounded by primitively armed indigenous peoples and so she ordered the ship into evasive jump procedures.
The first step in the evasive protocol was to raise shields to full strength and begin to break for orbit. On the XES01 the projector nodes were three-foot-tall to provide a kinetic weapon’s cushion. Zade had been standing close enough to the ship to become trapped in the cushion. His body had also acted as a short between the shields and the hull, causing a massive amount of energy to flow through his body which rendered him unconscious. While breaking for orbit, Zade’s body was exposed to extremely high temperatures causing extensive thermal damage.
The second step in the protocol was to make a short warp jump to the last known hospitable section of space. While back in high orbit, the ship could not make the jump due to a hull anomaly. Making the situation worse, there was a solar flare forecasted to happen within thirty minutes of the ship regaining orbital status. With the time crunch Samix chose to investigate and try to dislodge the hull anomaly personally. Usually a SSILF would have been sent, but due to their limited processing power there was a distinct possibility that it wouldn’t have been able to fix the problem and Samix would have to go out anyway, wasting precious time. As Samix moved over the hull toward the site of the anomaly she saw Zade pinned to the side of the ship. Running a quick scan Samix was informed that all of Zade’s basic life sustaining functions, heartbeat, breathing, etc., had stopped however, there was still electrical activity in the brain.
Samix freed Zade from the shields and brought him back inside the ship. As the outer door of the airlock c
losed the ship jumped, but not before it was hit by the oncoming solar flare. Samix began providing first aid in the airlock, while the pressure cycled. When the lock equalized Jorloss helped Samix get Zade to the isolation chamber where he could receive medical attention. While the ship was in warp, an initial diagnostic was run, and it appears that the solar flare had damaged the sub light engines and some of the systems of the ship. Jorloss also spent the time in warp, while Zade was asleep, gaining a full understanding of the human physiology. Documenting everything in order to send the information back to the Unity. The ship had dropped out of warp just before Zade awoke and was moving sub warp toward an objective unknown to Zade. Zade was now on a three-day flight to an uninhabited planet where the crew could repair the ship. As Samix finished her story she looked at Jorloss who gave her a thumbs up signaling that Zade had remained calm.
“How long, do you think, before you can return me to Earth?” Zade asked Samix.
“We are unsure but, as soon as we complete repairs, we will take you back. We have no need or desire to interact with class 2 species, such as humans.” Samix responded.
“Why do you keep referring to mankind as a class two species?”
Samix explained, “A class 1 species is a species that although sentient has not yet begun to look toward the skies. A class 2 species is any sentient species that has made some limited trips into space but remains divided into factions, thus limiting their progress. A class three species like Jorloss’ and mine have united as a species and conquered space travel.”
“Huh, makes sense, I guess. Am I supposed to just hang out in this 10’X10’ walk in closet for an undetermined amount of time while you fix the ship and go back to earth?”
Samix then explained Zade’s options to him. Option one was to remain in isolation for the duration of the flight for his own safety. Being that the XES01 is a multispecies ship, there were pathogens aboard that Zade was not immune to which would possibly kill him. Option two was for Zade to receive a limited nanite treatment to immunize him, at which point he would be assigned quarters and have limited access to the ship. Jorloss’ species, the Garnoo, has perfected nanotechnology and developed the nanite treatments. Nanites programmed to do anything could be injected into the bloodstream, where they would complete their task. The technology has essentially eradicated disease and prolonged the lifespan of Unity members with some species reaching 10,000 years old. The treatment that Zade would receive would be the basic Unity citizens’ treatment.
