Both men were smiling throughout the exchange, and Zack sensed the good-natured argument between them had been going on for some time.
A chime sounded, and Cyrus turned his attention to his instruments. "Okay, time to get busy. Check your restraints, everybody, it's time for me to bring this bird down."
Over the next ten minutes, the noise level inside the shuttle, from the retro engines and the hiss from the steadily increasing atmospheric friction, rose to a level making casual conversation impossible. Keeling was busy at the controls as he guided the shuttle down through the ever-thickening atmosphere. Having never flown in any kind of atmosphere herself, Ariane watched Cyrus at work and was impressed with his skill. There were a few bumps here and there, but mostly the ride down was remarkably smooth.
Finally, the noise began to abate as the ship slowed enough for Cyrus to begin deploying a pair of short, retractable wings and a rudder. Full deployment occurred over the next five minutes, with the ship decelerating the entire time. After full deployment, the shuttle was actually flying in the atmosphere rather than hurtling downward through it in a controlled fall.
Cyrus banked the ship around and leveled off, aiming for a land mass visible a short distance away. After circling the land mass, which turned out to be an island, he lined the shuttle up with a narrow, concrete runway and set her down. Through the viewport in front of her, Ariane could tell the runway had seen better days. After landing, he taxied the ship over to a receiving area and brought it to a stop. Everyone began unstrapping as Cyrus cut the engines.
After a few minutes, during which Keeling went through the rest of the process of shutting down the shuttle and deploying the rear cargo ramp, he announced, "It's okay to get off now, just be careful, some parts on the aft end of the ship will still be pretty hot."
The expedition members got up and filed aft to the cargo ramp before exiting the ship. Once on the ground, they gathered in a spot a good ten meters away from the shuttle and the considerable heat it was radiating. Within minutes, and seemingly oblivious to the heat, several of Cyrus' cargo handlers, who had been waiting near the receiving area, very efficiently boarded the ship and began unloading it. The first thing they unloaded was the expedition's gear, which the workers piled on the runway next to them.
Malus was in a state of pure ecstasy. Upon exiting the shuttle, he had immediately glided over to the edge of the runway and began to examine the common, mundane weeds inevitably sprouting up around the perimeter. From his attitude, the humble weeds could have been the most exotic plants in the galaxy. To him, they probably were.
As the ground crew continued to unload the shuttle, Cyrus came over to the team and said, "I don't mean to rush you, but we need to get in the air and on our way if we're going to be on the ground in DC before night comes. We don't like to land after dark."
Chapter 50. Custodial Reboot.
SPS Lenin, in orbit around Mars, October 15, 2676.
"Petty Officer Bobrik reporting as requested, sir." The little tech stood at attention down in Lenin's science lab but couldn't keep his eyes from straying to the two alien creatures in the chamber, one on the examination table and the other standing next to it.
"At ease, Bobrik. Yes, that thing is a Custodian. I believe you've seen one before?"
"Only on video, sir."
Kozloff turned and acknowledged the Hordean. "Have you met Betula?"
"I have not, sir," said Bobrik with a nod to the Hordean, "It's a pleasure to meet you..." It took him a brief moment to come up with the proper address, "...sir."
"The pleasure is mine, Petty Officer."
"This is our science officer, Ensign Dr. Tatiana Nuriyev."
Bobrik turned his attention to the other person in the room, who had gone virtually unnoticed due to the compelling presence of the two aliens. A petite, and very good looking brunette with blue-gray eyes treated him to a polite smile and said, "A pleasure to meet you, Petty Officer Bobrik. I've heard a lot about you." He'd seen her down inside Deimos, but with all the excitement, hadn't really had a chance to get a good look at her.
Bobrik found himself suddenly speechless, confronted as he was by two aliens and two officers, one of them a strikingly beautiful young woman, and the other the ship's captain. After a moment of confusion, he attempted to fall back on his training, struggling to remember the proper protocol and almost getting it right. "I...ah thank you, Dr...I mean Ma'am. I...ah hope it's all been good."
"It certainly has," said the ensign who, for some reason, seemed be enjoying Bobrik's discomfort.
Kozloff snapped him out of his state of mild confusion. "We need you for a special project, Petty Officer. I'll warn you at the outset, it could be very dangerous."
"I am at your service, Captain."
"There are five more of these creatures in the aft cargo bay," said Kozloff. "Unlike this one, they're all alive."
"Alive, sir?"
"Yes, but they're in some kind of hibernation or suspended animation."
"Hibernation, sir?"
"Each of them is encased in its own separate chamber. It looks like the chambers each have a control panel of some kind on the front. We'd like you to take a look at the controls and see if you can figure out how they work."
Bobrik's eyes widened. He took another quick glance at the science officer and visibly gulped before answering. "Whatever you need, sir."
"That's the spirit, boy! Come on everyone, we need to get to the cargo bay."
As they left, Kozloff told the guard stationed outside in the corridor to keep an eye on the alien in the lab. There was every indication that the creature was stone cold dead, but the captain was taking no chances.
Since it was only short distance from the science lab to the rear cargo bay, Betula and the three Soviets were in the bay in less than a minute. Bobrik surveyed the area, his eyes coming to rest on what appeared to be a standard Soviet military shipping container. Something about this one was most definitely special, however, as there were four guards, two on either end, and each pair was armed with a marine assault cannon. Something else was odd. All of them were wearing battle armor.
Kozloff led the group up to the two guards on the bow end of the container. A video monitor on the bulkhead, displaying the feed from the camera they had placed inside the container just before it had been closed back up, indicated nothing inside had changed. All five of the alien chambers were still sealed, and the vague outlines of the creatures inside could be made out through the fog within the booths enclosing them.
The two guards came to attention and saluted. "Sir," they said simultaneously.
"At ease, men. In a few minutes I'm going to ask you to unseal the door to this container. We really need to take a look inside. When we do, we have no idea what's going to happen. Make sure all of you are at the ready."
"Yes, sir," said Corporal Chernov, leader of the squad.
Kozloff turned back to his companions. "Before we open the door, we need to get into our spacesuits. If these men have to open fire, their weapons are powerful enough to blow holes in the hull. We don't want anyone trying to breath vacuum.
Kozloff, Nuriyev and Bobrik took a few minutes to don their spacesuits while Betula spun a Hordean protective envelope around himself. With everyone suited up, the group returned to the bow end of the container.
"We're ready, Corporal. Unseal the container, if you please."
Chernov approached the locked door and placed his palm on a panel just to the side of the seam surrounding the opening. The panel lit up and there was an audible "click" as the door latch released.
Kozloff spoke loud and plain so the guards at either end of the container would know what was going to happen in no uncertain terms. "Okay, everyone, one of us is going in. Do not, I repeat, do not hesitate to open fire if anything besides Petty Officer Bobrik tries to come out. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir," replied the four guards in unison.
"Bobrik? Your moment has come."
&n
bsp; The tech nodded his head and took another short look at the exquisite little science officer. She surprised him by reaching out and gently squeezing his shoulder with her hand. "Be careful, Petty Officer."
"...Thank you, Dr. Nuriyev.
Bobrik approached the door and carefully worked the latch mechanism before swinging one of the double doors open. With a glance back at the others, he stepped inside.
On the wall monitor, Kozloff and the others could watch the computer tech as he entered and knelt down to examine the controls on the chamber nearest the door. Bobrik scrutinized the waist-high panel intently for at least a couple of minutes before speaking up.
"Captain?"
"Go ahead, Bobrik."
"This is definitely a control panel of some kind." There was a short pause while he stood up and looked around some more. "Looks like all five of the chambers have the same setup."
"Can you operate those controls?"
"I'm not sure, sir. They look familiar enough, but I don't think I'm ready to just start pushing buttons."
"I wouldn't expect you to. What is your assessment of the situation in there?"
"There are five chambers, three along one wall and two along the other. The chambers are pretty simple, there isn't any visible machinery, so I'm assuming if there are mechanisms of some kind and a power supply, they're probably contained inside the base of the units."
"Any other thoughts?"
"Yes, sir. Before any of these creatures can get out, I assume whatever the fog is that's surrounding them would need to be evacuated. I don't know if it will be replaced with some special concoction that revives them or if the chambers just fill up with the atmosphere from the ship. I also can't tell if the chambers are refrigerated or not. Maybe not, the front panels don't feel cold at all. Then again, who knows what their technology is capable of? If we want to revive one of these creatures, we'll need to get the door to the chamber open. Trouble is, I don't exactly know how to go about it."
"What do you mean, Petty Officer?"
"I mean that operating the wrong control could start an automatic process concluding with the door opening up and the Custodian coming out before we're ready for it, sir."
"I see your point. Get some video of that control panel and come on out. We'll reseal the container and have a look at what you've found without taking the risk of starting a process we can't stop."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
After spending another two minutes exhaustively recording the control panel from every angle, a relieved Bobrik exited the container. Corporal Chernov closed and sealed the doors behind him.
"Let's rack these suits and get back to the lab," said Kozloff.
The three humans shed and hung up their spacesuits, and Betula reabsorbed his protective envelope before the four of them headed back to the science lab. Immediately after they arrived, Kozloff requested a look at Bobrik's video. The petty officer pulled his personal tablet, which had been linked to the telemetry of his suit, out of his pocket, accessed the lab computer and brought the images up on the monitor for all of them to see.
Bobrik played the short video recording a couple of times before anyone felt the need to say something. The control panel in the video was rectangular in shape, about five centimeters wide and ten centimeters tall. There was what appeared to be a large rectangular button along the top extending almost the full width of the panel. Beneath that, the panel contained six equally-sized, square buttons, each just under half the width of the large one, arranged in two vertical rows of three apiece.
"I see what you mean, Petty Officer," said Kozloff, "that definitely looks like a control panel of some kind. Makes you wonder what would happen if we pushed that big button at the top of the panel?"
"Good question, sir, it's hard to say if that would activate the chamber or not. They almost certainly have some kind of security system like a palm print or voice recognition or something. If that's the case, we could have a lot of trouble getting those chambers open."
"How about we take another look at the Custodian's arms and claws," said Tatiana, who had already crossed the room and was standing next to the table with the creature lying on it. "We know what the control panel looks like. Maybe we can determine if there's some kind of bodily structure the creature could use to operate the panel."
"Excellent idea, Ensign."
Bobrik was also impressed. The science officer wasn't just beautiful, she was also damned smart, not that he'd expected anything less.
The group gathered around the Custodian again. Nuriyev reached over and grasped the upper arm on the creature's undamaged side, holding the arm with one hand while using the other to bend the claw outwards so they could get a better look at it. The claw, which was relaxed and partially open, consisted of two nasty-looking, arced and serrated blades on the outside of the "hand," away from the body, and a single similar serrated blade on the inside, evolved to slip perfectly between the two other blades. They examined the arm and claw from all angles but could find nothing even close to any kind of flat surface, like a human palm, that might be used to interface with the buttons on the control panel.
Bobrik had a flash of insight, "How far does that claw open up?"
"No idea," said Nuriyev. "Let's see if we can find out. Let me grab some gloves, though, those claws look awfully sharp."
After slipping on a pair of sturdy neokevlar work gloves, she had Bobrik hold the arm steady while she grasped the single blade of the claw with one hand, held down one of the opposing claws with the other and pulled them apart. The claw opened wide enough so the angle between the single and double blades was nearly 180 degrees.
"We need to take another look at the video, sir," said Bobrik. "I have an idea."
The group watched while the computer tech ran the short video again. This time he paused it at a point where the putative control panel filled the entire view.
"I don't know for sure, sir," said Bobrik, "but maybe that big button across the top isn't a button at all."
"What do you mean, Petty Officer?"
"Watch closely while I run this again, sir," said Bobrik. He ran a short portion of the video. "There, look at that."
Upon closer examination, the surface of the large "button" appeared to be shimmering slightly.
"What am I seeing?"
"To me that looks a lot like the force curtains we saw down inside Deimos, sir. What if that's not a button, but some kind of high-tech keyhole covered by a force screen?"
"Meaning the creature has to stick a physical key of some kind into the keyhole to activate the controls?" said Tatiana.
"Something like that, ma'am," said Bobrik.
"We'd better take a really close look at those claws," said Kozloff. He had another thought, "What if the claw it would use to access the controls was one of those that got shot off when we captured the beast?"
"I have to believe they would have a back-up system of some kind, sir," said Bobrik.
Tatiana chimed in, "I have an idea, sir."
"Let's hear it, Ensign."
"It makes sense the Custodians would use their upper arms for any kind of delicate work. They're smaller than the ones below and closer to the eye membranes. They're also smaller and appear to be more dexterous than the others. That means if we're right about the keyhole, the key would probably be part of the claw on the upper arm. From the way the claw seems to work, I'd guess it's the single blade."
"This is all well and good," said Kozloff, "but how do we get that claw into the keyhole?"
"We could cut off the claw," said Bobrik, wincing at Nuriyev even as he made the suggestion.
Nuriyev gave Bobrik a stern look and said, "We won't be mutilating our only specimen unless we have no other choice. How about we leave the claw attached and take this alien up to the cargo container?"
"Or bring one of the modules down here to our alien?" suggested Bobrik.
"We'll have to take this one back to the cargo bay," said Kozloff. "I don’t think those
modules will fit through the corridors and around the corners we'd need to negotiate to get it down here to the lab."
"It seemed like a good idea," said Bobrik.
"It is," said Kozloff. "If we manage to revive one of them, the cargo bay would be the best place to contain it. The brig would be even better, but there's no way we can make that work."
"If we take one of the modules out of the container and manage to wake up the Custodian," said Bobrik, "we could have a team ready to trap it in a restraining net. After that we could haul it down to the brig."
Kozloff found himself weighing his options and not particularly liking any of them.
"Say we go with Bobrik's idea," said the captain, finally. "We take one of the modules out of the container and out onto the cargo bay floor. Then we move this Custodian up to the module and stick its claw into the keyhole."
"But then you'd have our dead specimen and a live one together in the same place," said Nuriyev. "Is that wise?"
"Is any of this wise?" replied Kozloff.
"It should be okay, sir" said Nuriyev. "It's highly unlikely an alien in one of those hibernation chambers could possibly be conscious and functional right away. If we manage to activate the chamber, there should be plenty of time to get our dead alien out of there before we'd need to worry about the live one."
"That might work," said Kozloff, "but it brings up another question."
"Sir?" said Bobrik.
"Do we really want to do this?"
No one answered for a long moment. Tatiana finally broke the silence. "It doesn't look like we have much choice, Captain."
"I'm afraid you're right, Ensign. Let's go see about getting one of those hibernation chambers out of the container."
"Captain?" said Bobrik.
"What is it Petty Officer?"
"I have something else that may help." He took the alien device he'd taken from the alien's quarters out of his pocket and showed it to his companions. "This is a translator."
The Archeon Codex: Guardians of the Galactic Sentinel Book 2 Page 26
