Stellar Flash: Alien Frequency

by Neil A. Hogan

  "This tray of chemicals will create the shell of the entire ship, just microns thick but stronger than carbon nanotubes." Watanabe moved slowly in his suit and turned to a board. As markers wouldn’t work in a cold vacuum, he used a sense board to write calculations with his fingers. "Unlike our usual industrial techniques, creating these bonds this way makes the surface almost indestructible." He traced a few equations on the board as the black liquid continued to spread.

  Moments later the liquid had completely disappeared from the tray and reached the last part of the energy template. Within seconds the liquid turned to something almost like icing, and then became completely solid and reflective, revealing a miniature version of the Stellar Flash, but with a black sphere in the center instead of a white one.

  As soon as the ship had finished growing, it began to feel the artificial gravity of the space station, and floated to land on the surface of the hangar.

  Watanabe reached over and flicked off a beam that had been streaming from a nearby terminal, creating the energy template. When the beam shut down, the ship shuddered a little then settled, finally able to exist on its own.

  He watched the ship for a moment, making sure the newly created shell could remain without the energy grid, then he strolled slowly over to it, and marked an X on the edge of one of its corners with white paint.

  Watanabe then moved carefully over to the other side of the hangar where a large tubular weapon sat against the wall, amongst industrial tools. “Now that the ship is complete, I will demonstrate how strong it is, with a plasma cannon.” Watanabe picked up the cannon, raised it to his shoulder, took aim, then fired at the white X. When the plasma hit the shell of the ship, it deflected off into empty space, and the force of the contact skidded the vehicle across the floor towards the wall. The friction of the floor slowed the ship’s movement and it came to a sliding stop, just before the airlock.

  Watanabe immediately made some adjustments to the lecture camera, and zoomed into the X. “As you can see, not a scratch. If I had fired that at any part of the station, the plasma cannon would have destroyed walls one after the other and decompressed multiple sections. As I’m a scientist, I knew which way the plasma would deflect for the safety of the base. Don’t try this at home.”

  The Admiral was already surprised that he had done that. Watanabe could be a bit erratic at times, but deflecting a plasma cannon into space when they had flight paths was irresponsible. Was anyone in danger? Admiral turned to the screen to check, then stopped. Of course, there weren’t any. She’d cancelled them. She guessed Watanabe wouldn’t have even thought to do that if there were ships in operation.

  That’s what she’d forgotten! To let everyone know that it was safe to resume flight paths. She should have set an alarm.

  Watanabe continued speaking "So, what have we learnt? We learnt that we cannot use the Von Mises Yield Criterion to calculate…”

  Heartness turned the stream off quickly and turned on her announcement system. “Alright everyone. Emergency is over. Back to normal operations. All ships can resume their original flight paths. All communications can resume.”

  She knew there weren’t that many urgent communications between the space bases and Earth. They weren’t being monitored 24/7. But if Earth had tried to contact her during the communications blackout, she’d soon know about it.

  Perhaps that was something she could deal with later. She quickly sent a message to Patel, who had been assigned to fill in for her whenever she was away from the base, grabbed her bag and headed to hangar sixteen.

  #

  The atmosphere to the hangar had been restored, and she could see Watanabe’s tight backside sticking out of the now open spherical section, no longer wearing his force suit. She admired it for a moment as the door closed behind her.

  “Ahem,” she said. She heard a bang and Watanabe pulled himself out of the sphere, rubbing his head.

  “Ah, Vicky. You surprised me! I was just about to call you. Good timing. You’re good to go.”

  “And the consciousness?”

  “As far as I can tell, still a bit of a baby, but she’ll be alright for you. I chose the resonant frequency closest to your alpha rhythms.”

  “That’s excellent!” said Heartness, clapping her hands together. Then she pointed at her shoulder bag. “I’m all set!”

  Watanabe stopped and looked at her directly. “But, I haven’t done any flight checks. The tests have all been responsive to individual stimulus, but not as a whole.”

  “Well, here’s my chance to do that part of the test for you, Hiro.”

  Watanabe slid the rest of the way off the triangular ship and put out his hand towards it, indicating that it was all hers.

  “If you insist. But I must make a formal protest.”

  Heartness laughed. “Of course! I’m very happy you’re worried about my well-being.”

  “One other thing,” said Watanabe. “Quite important, really. What are you going to call it? It’s got a sphere so I think a name with Maru in it would be great. What about Stellar Maru?”

  “Oh, I don’t think we’re ready for a name like that. Perhaps in a thousand years. It sounds a bit like a freighter ship, though. And I thought the tradition of ships made by Japanese ending in Maru disappeared decades ago.”

  Watanabe laughed. “I told you I was old fashioned.

  “In any case, I’m going to leave it up to the consciousness of the ship to decide. She’ll choose the best name based on both our feelings. I’ll find out when I link.”

  “Just make sure you let me know, so that I can do some nice stenciling on the outside for you!”

  “Will do. See you in a few hours, hopefully.”

  Watanabe stood back as Heartness hopped lightly onto the top of the triangle, then over to the petal-shaped control area.

  She quickly slid into the soft and comfortable beige cockpit lounge seat, and put her bag in the alcove behind her. She looked at everything approvingly. The ship had created itself to match her future body shape. She could use it for years and never worry about getting bigger.

  She swiped across her blank console and watched as the petals closed back into a half sphere shape, waving goodbye to Hiro as they did.

  Heartness looked around her as everything came online. The spherical screen showed the immediate outside of the ship. She could see Watanabe standing and watching patiently. To her left was the exit for non-flash shuttle craft, where she could just see a part of Saturn’s bulk peaking from the edge.

  She placed her hand flat on the white screen, and immediately the ship’s controls and maps appeared on her mind view system. She pressed some virtual buttons, entered an address, and the panel lit up with a countdown. She had quickly and easily completed the final integration with the ship. With it designed for her particular mental vibrational signature, no one else would be able to fly it.

  She felt the tube behind her resonate, send its field out, locate a vacuum point, then begin the frequency adjustment. The ship hummed as the isolation field began to spread around it, and the cockpit started getting brighter. Little lightning sparks flashed around the inside of the console, then everything went white.

  Outside the ship, Watanabe shielded his eyes as the bright light drained the color from everything around him, then he opened them again to see that the ship had gone. He waved a farewell to the empty space, and left the hangar.

  The hangar disappeared from the spherical view screen around her, and was replaced with a brown and purple wall. Heartness immediately slammed her hand onto the white screen in front of her, pausing the ship in mid-air.

  Somehow she had appeared within the atmosphere of the planet. That was far too close.

  She quickly set a course, speeding up time within the field of the ship, and the Stellar Breeze shot back up through slight wisps of clouds into a low orbit around the planet.

  She adjusted the course and chose a stable orbit from where to begin scanning for the Stellar Flash.


  She couldn’t yet detect it. Perhaps they’d started moving away from the planet? She reset the coordinates and shot to a higher orbit.

  Wait. Stellar Breeze? The consciousness had given herself a name! Heartness knew Watanabe would be pleased that at least one of the words he’d chosen had been kept.

  She momentarily smiled to herself, before frowning again. Nothing was coming up on the proximity scanner. Surely they were nearby?

  The scanner continued scanning while she grabbed her bag and checked over the contents. After studying the images Patel had sent her, she decided that Hogart might need this.

  She just hoped she wasn’t too late.

  Chapter 10

  Mashbug

  After going through the sterilization process and retracting their nanite suits, all of the crew had returned to the Stellar Flash. Even though he had only been gone a few hours, Hogart was glad to be back, and to have his flexibility back again. He didn’t like nanite suits. He really looked forward to using force suits again, hopefully on the next mission. A lot less cumbersome.

  He wasn’t too sure why there was a giant piece of holographic rock in the middle of the Center, though.

  Geo saw him looking curiously at it. “Amy’s turn.”

  Hogart nodded. “Thanks Geo. Otherwise I would have probably lay awake trying to work that one out. What’s the latest with the mushroom bugs?”

  “Mushbugs!” said Puppy.

  “Alright, mushbugs it is. Amy?”

  “Lots of news, sir. The star system is full of mushbugs. They use a cyborg bacteria that is quite virulent and has converted most of the outer atmospheres to carbon dioxide. Initially we thought it was too dangerous to take back to your reality, but I have since found your planet has had them before.”

  “Really?” asked Hogart, not quite following. Cyborg bacteria?

  “When it appeared on your planet about 650 million orbits ago, it was destroyed by cyanobacteria, photosynthetic bacteria that creates oxygen.”

  Hogart waved his hand. “Oh, that! Yes, I learned about that in high school. Do you think the mushbugs had made it to Earth that long ago?”

  “There is a possibility that they might have influenced the development of trilobites and horseshoe crabs,” said Amy. “Though the trilobites of Earth evolved in a very different way to the mushbugs.”

  “It’s possible that they transformed when shifting between the frequencies,” said Geo. “Perhaps the mushbugs here are what the trilobites of Earth really looked like in this reality.”

  Hogart pondered this for a moment. He knew from his history lessons that trilobites were one of the most successful species on Earth, roaming the seas for over 270 million years. Humans had only been around in their present form for less than a million years. If the mushbugs ever made it to Earth again, he doubted the human race would last long.

  He had a decision to make. He walked over to his station and stood looking at the crew. “AI, take this down. I officially declare that this area will be quarantined indefinitely, until such time as the creatures evolve to be mature enough to join the…”

  “Captain,” interrupted Amy. “Sorry to interrupt but permission to contribute another viewpoint.”

  “I didn’t think this was a voting issue.”

  “I think, with the binaries affecting our judgement, that we should all be voting on this issue to make sure that any problems any of us might have are not influencing our decision.”

  Hogart stroked his chin. “Alright. What’s your point?”

  “Captain, they only captured you out of fear. They wanted our technology out of desperation. They have not as far as we can tell in recent times, killed many of their kind. And, from what we understand, they could all be from the same single alien anyway.”

  Hogart looked at her glutinous form incredulously. “Amy, my crew were threatened with death! One of the queens wanted our technology to fight others of her kind. There’s evidence of a nuclear war having happened on the planet and, using your argument, the entire human race is from a single humanoid alien at some point.”

  “True, and at the meeting in 2050 which granted humanity a place in the IC, I was there using the same argument to defend your race!”

  Hogart was silent. He hadn’t any idea that Amy was so old, or that she had been such an important figure in their history. But could he really compare humans to mushbugs? How? They were almost like slaters. Or even cockroaches.

  And he hated cockroaches.

  “Geo?”

  “I agree with Amy. We haven’t found enough evidence yet to prevent them from joining. Or even for quarantining them.”

  Hogart looked about. Was he allowing his human side to influence his decision? An alien race treats him badly, so he won’t give them first contact rights?

  He sighed. Yes, he was doing exactly that.

  “Alright team, I value your input. And being an emotional human that’s just been captured, I’m more likely to judge negatively. Can we get a vote on it?”

  All the aliens in the Center wanted to give the mushbugs another chance. Hogart was the only one unsure. “Right! Another chance it is. But I don’t want to deal with the Queen down there. Should we investigate one of the other planets?”

  “There is one thing that we haven’t discussed yet, captain,” said Spiney. “You gave one of the queens your flash band. That is secret human technology and must never leave your side. We’re supposed to risk our lives to protect it. Yet, you just handed it over. We need to know whether we can trust you!”

  The other aliens all turned and looked directly at Hogart, who immediately felt like he should be backing away. What…?

  “Is this a mutiny, like Leafy did to Heartness? Are you being affected by the binary suns? In which case, perhaps we need to return to our frequency and get reinforcements.”

  “No captain,” said Puppy. “This is a written procedure that you signed off on. We need to know why.”

  Hogart sighed again. He needed his crew on his side. “AI, replay Hogart suit recording approximately five minutes before sterilization procedure.”

  The Center screen showing the brown and purple planet blanked out and was replaced with a blurred, flickering, shuddering and fast-moving image. Hogart’s helmet-camera’s recording. His fingers were lifting the flash band off his arm, then programming an address. The address briefly flashed red, then settled with a mark next to it. He then spun the addresses, pulled the band completely off, and handed it to the queen.

  “Pause video,” he said, then looked at the waiting aliens. “Well?”

  “You sent her to Enceladus?” asked Torus. “Why?”

  “I thought Heartness would find her and study her. If not, I would capture her when I got back. I’m sure she would have frozen almost instantly, the moment she arrived.”

  Behind Hogart, unbeknownst to him, a small spark had appeared on the back screen, getting larger, slowly appearing as a yellow dot, then an oval.

  “Captain. What if the queen had realized your trick and activated the return immediately?” asked Spiney, looking at the screen behind Hogart.

  “The flash bands default was human,” said Hogart, thinking, stroking his chin again. “It wouldn’t have been able to scan her full size properly to be able to transport her body to the correct coordinates. For a fast return, for security reasons it would transport what it could find, but the coordinates might be a little off.”

  “A few hundred kilometers off?” asked Geo, also looking at the yellow oval getting larger.

  “Oh, probably. She might have ended up on another island.”

  “Well, I do think it might be possible she missed the island altogether,” said Torus. “I believe it is highly likely she missed the entire planet.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure she’s ended up on Enceladus.”

  “Don’t you think we should check, just in case?” said Puppy, who had also noticed the image. “We wouldn’t want that flash band floating around anywhere,
would we?” Puppy’s eyes were growing wider as the yellow oval became clearer.

  “Oh, yes, that’s probably a good idea. We could…,” said Hogart. His voice tailed off as he realized that the aliens weren’t actually looking at him. They were looking at something behind him.

  He turned to see the yellow mushbug queen heading towards their ship at high speed.

  “Shit! AI, get us out of here!”

  “Activating flash drive to emergency coordinates,” said the pumice stone.

  The cylinder began to vibrate and turn white.

  “I don’t think this is going to work in time. The Queen will hit our isolation field before we flash. AI, just pilot us to another planet. Reduce our orbital velocity.”

  “Please state the coordinates for the planet location,” said the AI, powering down the flash drive.

  “Gaah. AI, the nearest one. Let’s go.” Even as he said it Hogart kicked himself. They were travelling at 3000 kilometers an hour. Even if he activated a fast time field around the ship, there was no way they could turn fast enough and take a new heading to avoid the bug.

  “Activating interplanetary drive,” said the AI.

  As the gold mushroom bug shot forward like a bullet, Captain Hogart knew that it was far, far too late.

  The gold queen smashed itself across the outside of the Center, its broken shell pieces and internal goo spreading rapidly over the top of the camera images.

  As the mashed mushroom bug pieces slid down to conceal all of the surround screen, Hogart rubbed his face in dismay, knowing that he had been instrumental in the death of the leader of the planet. Not to mention the fact that they were now travelling blind.

  His day couldn’t get any worse.

  Or, so he thought.

  Chapter 11