The Belt Loop _Book One

by Robert B. Jones

  No. That couldn’t be correct, she thought, pulling out one of the alien’s arms. These wings, attached to a small pair of vestigial arms, could have never supported this animal. Either it had lost its ability to fly because its use of technology had superseded its need for predator evasion and food gathering, or somehow these limbs had atrophied during its long period of hibernation.

  Wait. A hibernating bird?

  Birds that burst out of cocoons? Gagging for air?

  “Hey, doc. You seeing this?” she said into her suit mike.

  “Yeah, Mildred. That’s something,” Doctor Isaacs said. “I’d put a clamp on that mouth if I were you. No telling what rigor cycle that species has. You could lose a finger digging around in there.”

  Just what Gertz did not want: an over-the-shoulder critique of her work. “Good point,” she said. She reached for the clamps on her equipment table and after picking up two tools and rejecting them, she settled on a clamp and fastened it to the thing’s face. No matter how annoyed she was that the doc would come by and put his two-cents in, she was also thankful that he reminded her of her own personal safety. Sometimes her zeal got the better of her and she threw personal concerns away like used nose tissues.

  “I could suit up, you want,” Isaacs suggested.

  “I’m fine, okay?”

  “I think you should put that thing in the scanner; get a better look,” Isaacs offered in his best avuncular voice. “I could be back and ready in a flash.”

  Gertz chuckled. “No thanks, Anson. I’m okay. Not a lot of room to maneuver in here, but thanks for the offer.”

  “Right,” he said. Isaacs watched her for a few more minutes and then silently departed, leaving Gertz alone with her new challenge.

  “Man,” she would be telling Isaacs later, “I wish I would have let you in to help me!”

  Chapter 19

  Max Hansen followed the two MA ratings into the tunnel. The heavy pumping and harsh lighting of the huge anteroom meters behind her now. The two ET guys, Olson and Johns, were close on her heels. Commander Haslip followed them and moved slowly in the rear of the column. Hansen wondered if the lieutenant commander was losing some of her resolve. This had been a harrowing four-hour jaunt so far. Soon they would have to get fresh breathing gear from the rear.

  In what had become a standard for the trek through the alien ship, they soon encountered another hatch. The controls were similar to the ones they had just activated and Olson was the crash-test-dummy this time. He looked over the panel for a minute and pointed out a few things to Johns. The masters-at-arms stood to each side of the hatch and Olson hit the stud.

  Same as before: a little door opened revealing a small red disc. When this small panel door opened, Hansen noted that the main hatch leading back to the catwalk silently closed. At least they didn’t have to rely on suit lights now. This tunnel was as bright as a passageway leading to the crew mess back on the Christi. Before he hit the red disc, Olson looked back at Haslip. She twirled her hand and tilted her head to one side. Let’s get this shit over and done, she seemed to be saying through her silent gestures.

  Olson hit the disc and the hatch eased up and away. The tunnel was instantly bathed in bright white light. If the travels through the outer chambers had been a trip through a dark and decomposing hell, this new compartment was a trip through a sleek and sanitized heaven.

  Hansen was the first to move forward. In her mind, the goal had been reached.

  She entered the space and took a few steps to her left, making room for the rest of the expedition to join her. If dropping jaws made sounds, she would have heard six audible pops followed by the sure to come gasps.

  “Commander Haslip. I think we’ve found what we’ve been looking for. This is the operations center of the boat, ma’am,” Hansen said.

  “As I live and breathe. . .” one of the MA ratings hissed.

  “Holy shit, sir,” Olson added.

  “Knock it off, all of you,” Haslip commanded. Then she said, “Bridge, Captain Haad. Commander Haslip.”

  Finally Hansen was able to move. They were standing in a large curved control room with a huge central window made out of a filmy transparent material. This ship was very much alive if the thousands of lights and displays were any indication. Small chittering sounds made their way into her ears and hundreds of screens flashed unknown symbols and projections in repeating patterns. The hatch she had just come through eased silently closed to her right.

  “Go ahead, commander. Haad here.”

  “Captain, I think we’ve found the bridge. As you can see, this place is alive with activity but no personnel that I can see. There are a few more hatches around the circumference of the space, and it’ll take a few minutes to check it all out.”

  “Good job, Gena. Now get that bridge decoded. See if you can find out how she thinks,” Haad said.

  They exchanged a few more comments and Haslip signed off. She turned to Max and said, “You heard the captain, lieutenant. Get this beast under control. Take Olson and Johns and see if you can find a power source. Look for recording devices, archives, logs, radio gear, what have you. The rest of you come with me. Let’s see what’s behind those other doors.”

  Max nodded her assent and moved away.

  Haslip radioed to the rear and ordered up more men and equipment, telling them to follow her marks along the tunnels. She wanted this bridge area torn down and reassembled in two hours and she would not tolerate any slacking. Did she make herself perfectly clear?

  “Aye, aye, sir!” was the response she received from forty-five voices.

  * * *

  Three more fucking deaths. Eddie Rich was livid. When was the captain going to stop pussy-footing around with that goddamned ship? A thin bead of perspiration had settled on his brow and Rich wiped it away with the back of his hand. He was stalking the weapons bay, a remote launcher in his hand, death in his mind.

  He was beginning to think he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. After all his time in the Navy it would come to this. Sitting on his hands waiting for that thing to go ballistic or launch some kind of torch at the Christi and her crew. He quickened his pace. For the tenth time this watch he walked purposefully to the last gun emplacement on the port rack. He lifted the edge of the tarp and watched the control screens on his baby. She was ready. He was ready. All he needed now was an excuse to launch the drone.

  That excuse was quickly headed his way.

  * * *

  “Milli, I want to ask you something,” Davi Yorn said into the comm stack.

  “Can it wait, Davi? I’m sorta in the middle of something right now.”

  He was standing on the safe side of the containment locker watching Milli work on the bird through the large observation window. He noticed she didn’t even turn around, didn’t take her attention away from the twisted form on her table. He looked past her and saw the display screens in the lab cycling through comparative anatomy diagrams of assorted flying creatures. Sometimes the display would stop and flash for a second or two, highlight a skeletal part, wink rows of data to life, then move on to the next specimen in Gertz’s database. The largest screen showed a false-color image of the man-sized creature on the examining table.

  “Take a couple of minutes, Mister Gertz. That thing’s not going anywhere.”

  Milli knew that when the XO called her “Mister” it was time to obey. She dropped her probe onto her equipment table and turned to face the observation window. “Okay, sir, what’s on your mind?” Her tone was respectful but a razor-thin edge of exasperation sliced through her words.

  “From a strict exobiology viewpoint, what do you make of that ship, those birds, the cocoons and the like? I’m trying to fit in what I saw with the take Max Hansen had on it. The ‘slaver’ angle.”

  Gertz tilted her head to one side. Then she shrugged. The tell-tale displays in her headgear painted the bottom of her face in multicolored lights. “Could be. I mean, that’s one possibility out of many.
My problem with that line of reasoning is, if these birds are slavers, where are the slaves?”

  “That question is what made me stop in to see you. Something about that derelict is just not making a lot of sense. I can see where an avid history buff like Hansen could draw similarities between that ship — especially considering that hold with the thousands of cages and the chains and all — with a merchant vessel involved with the slave trade. But, it still begs the question of what are birds doing on a ship obviously designed by a worm?”

  “I see your point, but there could be an explanation for that as well. For example, what would a strange species imagine to find inside if one of our flitters crashed on its planet? A metal aircraft with stubby wings and fire shooting out of the tail would not necessarily mean that the occupants were constructed out of the same stuff. If our hypothetical alien rescuers pulled out an axially symmetric four-limbed creature — a man — what would they think of that? Would they probe its ass looking for an engine? Sure, we designed some of our atmospheric flyers based on the animals we knew were capable of flight. Birds. But that’s where it ended. A man is no more related to a bird than he is to a spaceship.”

  Yorn shook his head in agreement. “Then you think that ship was designed to mimic some other life form found on its native world, right?”

  “Too early to tell. Once my crew brings back all of the data and we can evaluate all of the DNA from some of those cocoons, I wouldn’t be comfortable venturing a guess.”

  “What about your gut?” Yorn asked.

  Gertz put her hands on her hips and looked at the creature on the slab. “Shit, Davi, I don’t know. The Varsons were very much like us, and, so far, until now, they’re the only ones we have comparative data for. This thing here — well, to be honest — it stops me from even having any gut feelings.”

  “I see.” After a pregnant pause, Yorn pointed his finger at the exobiologist. “Carry on, Milli. But keep me in the loop.”

  She twirled him a two-finger salute and returned to her work.

  Chapter 20

  It didn’t take Haslip’s crew long to find them. The survivors.

  The masters-at-arms had systematically opened all the hatches on the newly-discovered bridge. Two of the doorways opened up onto more tunnels; one opened hatch revealed an anteroom loaded with racks and racks of electronic gear; still another hatch led to a short tunnel that made a severe ninety-degree drop; it was on the fifth try that they found the sleep chamber.

  Three rows of sarcophagi, made of glass instead of stone, ringed a small raised dias in the center of a circular chamber. The lighting was subdued and parts of the equipment racks showed damage.

  To Haslip, it looked like a last-stand battle was pitched in the chamber. Sickly trails of dried or frozen ichor trailed away from some of the capsules. Several of the glass covers were splattered with dark-brown streaks. One of them had been hacked up with what must have been a three-tined fork. Or a bird’s talons.

  The group of sailors walked slowly into the heart of the chamber, pausing long enough to peer inside the capsules as they proceeded. Out of the eighteen capsules, only eleven were still functioning. Haslip noticed the winking lights on the ends of the chambers that had not been plundered or partially destroyed. It was really difficult for her to tell what had happened in this place.

  “Got another live one, commander,” one of her sentries said. “I’m counting eleven units still sealed, ma’am.”

  She walked up to the chamber nearest the sailor and looked inside. The capsule was two meters long, resting on a raised platform and it had ten to twelve tubes and pipes emerging from its base and disappearing into the slick plastic deck. The inside of the enclosure was rimed with crystals and the ice obstructed a clear view of the contents.

  The same could not be said of the destroyed capsules. Those horrible contents were very easy to see and disturbing to witness. Haslip took a quick step backwards when she peered into the first of the broken chambers. In it was a decomposed earthworm, a creature almost a meter-and-a-half in length, its segmented head protruding from a silverized integument that could have been clothing at one time. There were rips and tears in the garment and near the uppermost hem of the thing, two arm holes were torn and sliced away from the neckline. The dead worm had part of its head removed and hardened mucus flowed away from the wound in frozen rivulets. Haslip could only see half of a mouth and part of one eye on the corpse. She moved to the next chamber without speaking.

  “Ma’am, I’m sending for one of the exobiologists from the hold, if that’s okay,” Petty Officer Shau Feng said.

  Haslip hesitated and mumbled her agreement.

  “Should we bag these things?” another rating asked. His name was Quine.

  “Yes, Mister Quine. We’re gonna need a lot of bags. Some floating hand carts, too. I don’t know if we should try to open these things, the ones that’re working or not. Get the geeks up here to take a look.”

  Quine switched freqs and stepped away from the group.

  “You should see this, commander,” Feng said, pointing to another open capsule. “It’s another one of those bird things.”

  She walked to where Feng stood and looked at the indicated capsule. One of the bird creatures had been cut almost in two. Half of it was inside the ruined chamber, half was in a heap near the far end. Deep brown gouges marred the surface of the intact portions of the sarcophagus and dark black stains trailed away from the body parts on the deck. Maybe the bird had been trying to get into that capsule when some kind of disaster struck. Haslip was at a loss to explain it. The capsule was empty save the upper torso of the bird, a torso leaking frozen entrails.

  All in all, the rest of the damaged capsules were a variation of the one she had just looked at. Some had bird remains, others had worm remains. Either way, it was impossible to tell who had been trying to get in or who had been trying to get out. The battle had been fierce and none of the exploded capsules were easy on the eyes.

  * * *

  Max was in the communications compartment with the two electronics technicians, Olson and Johns. For the last hour she had tried to glean some insight into the workings of the alien electronics. She had Olson disassemble one of the stacks that was dark and he found electronic gear that was so foreign in nature that he could only shake his head.

  “I know it’s operated by moving electrons through it. See this node here, and the one here? I’m guessing those are input/output tracks. Maybe this thing is digital, maybe not.”

  “Okay, I see that. Try to pry open one of those working units. See if you can find a similar board,” Max said.

  Johns shook his head. “Is that really the way to go, lieutenant? I mean, we could pull out the wrong thing and kill the whole bridge. Maybe even blow up this whole ship. Some kind of auto-destruct mechanism could be wired into these boards as anti-intrusion protection. I’d think twice about that.”

  “Well, I’m willing to take a chance on something. Get one of those panels open and ease one of the boards out slowly. If the ship reacts, we can see what kind of reaction we get and push the damned thing back in, can’t we? Think about the bridge on the Christi. Some of that shit is just controlling the coffee maker or the vid blister.”

  “I’ll grant you that,” Johns said gravely, “but some of those circuits control weapons, field parameters, life support. . .”

  Max laughed. “So, what? You’re worried about losing this unbreatheable shit that passes for air on this worm? We’re in evo suits, Mister Johns. What’s the worst that could happen? The worm self-destructs? Without even one of those ‘You Have Ten Minutes To Abandon Ship’ announcements?”

  “Okay, I see your point, lieutenant, but what if we did get one of those warnings? How’s your Bird? Or maybe you speak Worm? How would we even freaking know?”

  Olson joined in the conversation. “The louie’s right. What’ve we got to lose?”

  “I just don’t want to be the guy on the recording that says ‘I
wonder what this green button does’ when they replay that shit back at Fleet,” Johns said.

  “Fine, then,” Max said. “You open the fucking panel, I’ll pull the components. My responsibility.”

  The two ETs looked at each other. Olson reached for his tools. Johns just shrugged and walked away.

  * * *

  “All I’m saying, sir, with all due respect, is that ship is not what it seems to be. You saw the feeds from that ultra-modern bridge. You saw the feeds from that hyper chamber. Something went wrong on that ship, and until we know what it was, we should not jump to any conclusions.” Davi Yorn was pacing the wardroom and waving his hands at the captain.

  “No need to stand on ceremony, Davi. I respect what you’re trying to tell me. I just don’t know if I have enough facts to agree or not.”

  Yorn settled into one of the chairs across from Captain Haad. “Look at it from my standpoint, that’s all I’m suggesting.”

  Haad pushed away his coffee cup. “So, you’re suggesting that we pull out of the worm, let the ship move out of the Higgs Field and tell it to have a nice day? First Contact Protocol, Davi. It’s in the regs.”

  “I know. But, we’ve already lost four lives over there. That’s four letters of regret from the Secretary of the Navy and I can tell you now, in peacetime, all hell is going to break loose back home on Elber. That’s four families without sons coming home, without even a body to bury on some grassy plain overlooking the Scorpius.”

  Haad looked away. Once while he was between ships he had been assigned the duty of next-of-kin notification. Most of those deaths had been the result of accident or negligence; this was not the same. These men, especially the last three, had died horribly and an alien ship was the agent of their demise. Those deaths were just barely classifiable as death in the line of duty. More like the men had not paid attention to where they were walking. Stupid mistakes.