The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “Well,” Crier said, whispering for once, “don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy my chances against the doormen.”

  “No, my thoughts precisely, Crier,” said Motor quietly.

  “Look. To the left about halfway down—looks like a vent grill or something,” breathed Fuzzy.

  “Well spotted, Fuzz. Go check it out, Chip. Get the fibre probe from Crier’s pack and have a look inside the grill,” ordered Motor.

  “Okay, on it,” reported Chip as he retrieved the fibre optic probe and crept gingerly towards the large vent cover. He poked the wire-thin inspection tool through gap in the middle of the grill. The hair-like probe was far too small for the exoskeleton-clad aliens to see.

  “Looks like a service tunnel or vent line running parallel to this one. Easily big enough to crawl through, but not stand in,” reported Chip, happy to have found a way out. “Err, Motor, how am I gonna remove this thing without them spotting me? Seems like they’re looking right at me,” he queried, feeling the strange sensation of being a ghost in plain sight, even though he knew he was no more visible than faint heat haze.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, guys. I’m going back up the slope, to where they can’t see me. Okay, I’m removing my backpack now; lifting my pack cloak and placing the backpack on the ground against the wall. Hopefully, nothing will come past here and spot it. Okay, I’m removing my cloak,” Motor commentated as he tracked back down the slope towards Chip. Chip tracked his captain’s movements on his contact lens’ HUD map.

  “Ahhh, I see your plan,” whispered Chip.

  “Now, Chip, see if you can lift off the grill. It looks like it just slides off. I’ll hold this cloak between the grill and the aliens,” explained Motor, suspending the invisibility cloak as close to the grill as he could, like a matador. The cloak acted to only shield objects within half a metre from its surface, a little more than the thickness of a full backpack. Chip carefully slid off the grill while Motor shielded it from view, covering the grill with the cloak on one side and taking it from Chip.

  “Right, guys, get inside that service tunnel before they notice the grill has disappeared. I’m off to get my backpack. Be back in a tick,” said Motor as he went back up the slope with the shrouded grill. He hoped the aliens’ visual system was like human eyes, attracted to movement but not necessarily instantaneous changes as had just happened to the grill. He picked up the backpack and placed it behind the grill, which was behind the invisibility cloak in front of him. He walked carefully down the hill at pains not to drop anything and give himself away. He reached the service tunnel entrance and held the cloak-covered grill like a shield in his right hand while passing his backpack to Chip. Motor’s arm was aching by this point, having carried the heavy grill for so long in an unnatural position. He backed into the hole with great difficulty, several drips of sweat rolling from his forehead, one passing into his right eye. He affixed the bottom part of the grill, leaving an inch at the top to pull through the cloak. He drew in the grill and lay back against the dark service tunnel wall, breathing with relief. After replacing his backpack and covering it once more with the cloak, the men crawled further into the belly of the alien base.

  As Motor crawled through the tunnel at the back of the procession, he thought of rats scurrying through a human pipe. This vent line was too small for an alien, but just big enough for humans. All the evidence so far told him that the aliens would treat humans as humans treated rats: like dangerous vermin they needed to eradicate.

  Chip, at the front, radioed quietly back to the team. “Looks like there’s a fixed set of bars roughly level with the blast doors in the main tunnel. I’m gonna set my shoulder pod laser to cut them out.”

  The laser was set to cut mode and sliced through the metal bars like a hot knife through butter. Chip held them as the second cut was made on each bar and laid them down carefully to avoid betraying their presence.

  They continued past the guarded blast doors directly to their right and on towards the first vent outlet. It split off to the right as a smaller branch line; too small to crawl through. Chip ran the fibre optic probe several metres along the line and directed it down through the vent outlet. It revealed a dimly lit, but wide corridor with plain surfaces continuing in the direction of the tunnel. Several doorless entrances could be seen further along the corridor, deeper inside the base.

  Looking along the straight vent pipe in front of him, Chip concluded, “Looks like this vent leads to the rooms up ahead, let’s keep going.”

  “Guys, I can see multiple aliens up ahead, one coming down the corridor,” said Crier, using his infrared mode to view the aliens’ heat signatures beyond the vent pipe.

  “On the fibre it looked like there were three rooms on this side before the main corridor took a turn to the right way up ahead. Does that tally with what you’re seeing, Crier?” asked Chip.

  “Could be. Hard to say. There are three figures in the room coming up, then an empty room, then a whole bunch of aliens spread out in what looks like a much bigger room,” he replied.

  They carefully advanced to the next vent outlet. Again, the line branched and it took Chip and the fibre probe to get a view inside the room. The vent line had stayed horizontal, but the corridor and its adjoining rooms sloped down, putting the vent more in line with the first room’s ceiling than its walls. The near-invisible fibre tip carrying a camera and mic was poked through the vent and looked down on three aliens in a dimly lit room about the size of a double garage. They wore no clothes but had on metal headsets, which circled their heads, covering their big, black eyes and narrowing off at the back. Two metal lines sprouted from the top of the headsets and curved into their large, pointed ears that sat atop their heads. There were workbenches around the periphery of the room, which seemed to have on them an array of strangely familiar electronics, cabling and components.

  “Shit, you know what they are?” whispered Crier, viewing the feed from Chip’s fibre probe. “Those, my friends, are components from Santa Maria!”

  “I agree… It sure looks that way,” said Motor.

  “Either that or the aliens have developed exactly the same electronics as us, which I doubt,” Crier joked dryly.

  The aliens didn’t speak and only shifted on their feet occasionally as if watching their headsets intently. Then there was a voice. Not the aliens; not the four human soldiers. It was a slightly synthesized, female, human voice coming from an unseen source outside of the fibre probe’s view. West Coast American accent.

  “This is mission control…”

  “T-minus-3-minutes. Arm extended, probe in launch position. Commence manoeuvring jet power-up.

  “T-minus-one-minute. Release secondary retention bolts and energise hydraulic pusher.

  “T-minus-ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one… We have release…”

  The voice stopped and the aliens turned to each other, seeming to become more animated with their hand, head and tail movements. They made no audible sound, but seemed to be communicating somehow. Their scaly skin was indeed snakelike; their sharp, carnivorous teeth were revealed when their lipless mouths parted with regular, seemingly random moments.

  “What the hell is this?” asked Chip, searching for answers.

  “They’re working on our language by the looks of it. Perhaps these three are linguists. Who knows?” replied Motor.

  The aliens had seemingly taken apart at least some of the Santa Maria probe and accessed audio recordings from her memory banks. It seemed like they had at least appreciated the significance of the spoken word even if they did not communicate audibly themselves. Given time, it would be a major advantage if they could understand humanity’s most widely-spoken language but humanity could not decipher theirs.

  “Should we take them out? Plant a delayed demo charge here?” asked Fuzzy.

  “No, Fuzz, this is not a target of opportunity. At some point, we need to be able to communicate if we want any semblance of
peace with the aliens. Can’t imagine that’ll be a friendly conversation any time soon, but we at least need the possibility of it in future. Let’s move on,” instructed Motor.

  The next room along was revealed to be devoid of aliens, but had rack upon rack of what looked like spares for the base. There were also some sort of pressure vessels, possibly containing compressed gas and an array of different sized containers with a strange alien script on them, which reminded Motor of Hebrew a little, although he was sure it was uniquely alien. This room was the same size as the first room in which the suspected linguists worked.

  The final room before the vent pipe halved in size and branched right and left was more the size of a sports hall than a double garage. It looked more like a lab but with subdued lighting. There were at least twenty aliens dotted around the place, most of them around the periphery or at workstations distributed about the expansive hall. They were all much taller than the average human; although on average not as massive as the three-hundred kilo monster they’d seen exit the exoskeleton outside. There were also two exoskeleton-clad guards either side of the round tunnel entrance, which climbed off to the left and towards the forest road Santa Maria was transported along. And in the middle of the lab was the partially deconstructed carcass of what they’d come fifteen light-years for: humanity’s Santa Maria probe.

  “Twenty-five are unarmed—at least as far as we can tell. Two exoskeletons that look heavily armed. With what I have no idea. Nothing good anyway,” summarised Chip.

  “Right. We’ve no idea what the reaction of the unarmed aliens will be if we assault the lab. They might attack us along with the guards; they might flee; they might look for cover. Whatever we do we’re heavily outnumbered assuming they have more armed guards on the base,” said Motor.

  “I think that’s pretty safe to assume, Motor,” said Crier.

  “Agreed. We’ve got the element of surprise still. Whatever sensor the AFVs pinged us with they haven’t been using inside the base so far,” Motor continued.

  “You know I’ve been thinking about that dust-up with the AFVs,” said Crier. “I think they must have some sort of sonic detection sensors, a bit like bats. I doubt it’s gravimetric – the only other thing that it could be – too inaccurate on the planetary surface to find us.”

  “Probably right, Crier—and that’s important stuff if we face an AFV again or otherwise get pinged. But back to the here and now. Chip, can you get a fix on the FTL drive? We’re also interested in locating the fusion reactor as a secondary target,” said Motor.

  Chip manipulated the fibre probe and zoomed in on Santa Maria, scanning every square inch of her, looking for clues. However, the plain truth was that the side of the probe that the aliens had opened up was obscured from their viewpoint.

  “They’ve clearly opened her up along the far side—part of the body casing has been folded up. But I can’t see past the probe body and inside to where they’ve been working on her,” Chip sighed, frustrated.

  “Have you checked out all the components on the benches? There are quite a lot. Perhaps one of these tells us whether it’s still there or not,” suggested Crier, hopeful.

  “That’s what I’ve been doing. There’s nothing that looks like FTL drive components or fusion reactor parts for that matter. Could’ve missed something though, as they’re made up of thousands of parts. I'll check again. You guys help me review the feed. Tell me to stop if you see something interesting,” said Chip, once again zooming into each and every place where components could be seen one-by-one. The painstaking search took over an hour, the team calling on reference blueprints that had been uploaded on Earth to help them identify the FTL drive and reactor. Their search proved frustratingly fruitless.

  “Guys, we need to get inside that room and get a look-see around the other side of the probe. My feeling is they’ve removed it, but we just can’t tell from here,” said Motor; words of agreement from the other squad members at his assessment. “Here’s the plan. We all need to back up and enter the storage room we just past. Let’s hope it’s still clear. We’ll climb down through the vent and make our way into the lab using the main corridor. Fuzzy, you cover the corridor and our backs. Chip and Crier, take either side of the lab entrance as cover. Line up your shoulder pod rockets on the exoskeletons. If the shit hits the fan, they’re your priority. Have your HK750s ready to take out the other aliens if they present a threat. I’ll go inside and get a look at the inside of Santa Maria. It’ll be a quick in-and-out. I don’t want us hanging around in here in case we get detected or there’s a chance collision with me inside the lab. All clear on the plan, boys?” he asked, raring himself up for action.

  “I should go in, Cap, it’s a demo job after all,” protested Chip.

  “Negative, Chip. Let me. We don't even know if it’s there,” Motor insisted, bravely preferring to risk his own skin and perfectly capable of setting a couple of demo charges if it was there.

  “Where are you placing the demo charges if it’s a positive?” asked Chip.

  “I’ll need to find a spot on or near the probe where it’ll remain hidden and won’t get spotted as I plant it. I’ll take two charges from you, Chip, and will hopefully set them on the first look. If not, we’ll go in again,” he replied.

  “I’d prefer them on the probe not near it. We want this thing smashed to atoms with no wreckage they can get clues from,” insisted demolitions man Chip.

  “Exfiltration?” asked Crier.

  “Back the way we came. The timer will be set to give us plenty of time to get back into the vent line and out of here undetected,” Motor replied.

  “Any more questions, guys?” asked Motor, pausing for a short time, “No? Okay, good. Let’s back up there and out of this pipe, my neck’s starting to ache!”

  The patrol moved silently and invisibly towards the entrance of the expansive, dim lab. With Fuzzy, Crier and Chip in position covering him, Motor picked his moment to tread quickly and quietly towards Santa Maria. Thankfully, the aliens were mostly standing still at their workbenches. The sight of them up close and the way they examined human-made components with their sharp-clawed fingers sent a chill down his spine. Their large, black eyes reminded him of a shark’s; soulless and lacking human empathy. The aliens’ sheer size was intimidating too, even for a deadly Special Forces soldier armed to the teeth. The best human martial artist would stand no chance against even these smaller alien specimens. He’d managed to keep his distance, weaving his path to avoid the largely static aliens. Until he was three quarters of the way towards the far side of the probe, none of the aliens had moved much in that section of the lab. That all changed when an alien carrying a circuit board turned to face him abruptly and set off towards the probe and a collision course with Motor. His instincts took over, rolling to his left and out of the alien’s path, its tail brushing his leg on the way past. The alien stopped. It paused for two of the longest seconds of Motor’s life and turned to look at his tail, inspecting the floor for what it had brushed against and finding nothing. The alien stared for several seconds. Motor could have sworn he’d made eye contact with the huge beast. He breathed a sigh of relief and felt a drop of sweat roll down his face as the alien resumed its course over to a colleague on the far side of the room. Motor got back onto his feet and proceeded to the open side of the probe and stopped.

  It was the missing fusion core that he noticed first. A relatively large component, its absence was obvious with even a cursory glance. Damn it! he thought.

  He surveyed the internals for the FTL drive. He double-checked the photo of the drive on his contact lens HUD not wanting to conclude what he feared. It was beyond doubt: the FTL drive was gone.

  “Shit, it’s not there!” whispered Crier, viewing Motor’s video feed through his own contact lens display.

  Motor stealthily rejoined his comrades in the large corridor outside of the lab, pushing his back against the wall, trying to collect his thoughts.

  “The search
continues…” remarked Fuzzy.

  “What now, Motor? Keep exploring I guess?” asked Crier.

  “It could be bloody anywhere—here or off-base. This place is enormous!” sighed Chip.

  “There’s nothing limiting our time here, no hard deadline, so we just keep searching. The sooner we take it out of alien hands the better,” said Motor.

  “Yes, but we’re against the clock though, aren’t we? Our orders are that if we can’t locate the probe we should destroy the base. And that means using the nuke while we still can,” proposed Chip.

  “No. We’ve probably not searched even ten percent of the base yet. We’re in the right place, most of the rest of the probe’s in there,” he said, referring to the enormous lab he’d just crept out from. “That means it’s at least part research centre and that makes it likely to be around here somewhere. We need to follow this main corridor round to the right and check out what’s there…”

  “We can’t be pissing about here forever. What if they detect us? What if we’re taken out before we set the demo charges or nuke? We shouldn't forget what's at stake here. They start sending their space force to Earth with our FTL technology and we jeopardise everything. These bastards don’t even know we’re here at the moment. Let’s hit ’em hard and leave none of them alive to tell the tale,” Chip replied, not backing down to his captain. In operational Special Space Service units far more dissention and discussion was allowed than in regular army units, so their difference of opinion was acceptable to a point.