Robot Empire_Planet of Steel

by Kevin Partner

  Arla glanced down at her navigational display. “Scout has laid in an intercept course, should we proceed?”

  “What’s the alternative?” Hal asked, his eyes fixed on the console in front of him.

  “Just checking you want to go through with this. We could turn around and go back through the gate.”

  Hal turned to her. “And go where?”

  “I don’t know, anywhere but here.”

  “Come off it, what’s the point in wandering aimlessly around the Robot Empire? We need Scout to plot multiple jumps - as soon as we wake her up she’ll know we’ve betrayed her.”

  Arla thought for a few moments as the lights winked on her panel, the only sound the whirring of equipment and the occasional chink of a micro-meteroid fizzing on the ship’s shielding. “Betrayal? Is that how you’d see it?”

  “We said we’d do something –”

  “We didn’t have any choice.”

  Hal shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We said we’ll do it, so we should do it.”

  “Good, that’s what I think too.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “Because I wanted to be sure that you agreed,” she said, then flicked a switch on the console. “Doc, I’ve asked him and he’s good to go.”

  “So we’re all mad, then. I was relying on him to be the voice of reason,” McCall’s voice said.

  For the first time since his injury, Arla saw a smile spread over Hal’s face. Thin and reluctant, perhaps, but a smile nonetheless.

  “How are things down there?”

  “All lights are green. Just as well since I have no idea what I’d do if any flashed red.”

  Arla glanced across at Hal and smiled. For the first time, he didn’t flinch, he merely nodded at her. “You should have paid more attention to your training, doctor,” Arla said. “We’re relying on you to fix anything that breaks.”

  “I’m a doctor, not a wrench monkey!”

  Arla flicked the contact and the channel went dead. “We’d better hope everything stays green down there. I don’t think Indira would make a great mechanic.”

  “I’m too busy worrying about red lights up here. Have you laid the course in?” Hal said.

  “Yep, let’s see if the monster notices us.”

  “Now at one tenth standard,” Hal said, his eyes on the tactical display. “I’m going to take it easy to begin with so I can get used to how Scout handles when her mind is off on vacation.”

  “Acknowledged,” Arla responded. She peered out of the corners of her eyes as he focused on the console in front of him. Occasionally he would nudge the joystick or his feet would move as he made minor adjustments, but it was the joy on his face that took her breath. Perhaps, while he was piloting the ship, it had become an extension of him and provided the freedom of movement he’d missed so badly.

  The console beeped and Arla flicked a relay. “Yes doctor?”

  “I’m reading a surge in x-rays, better suit up.”

  “Acknowledged,” Arla sighed. She’d hoped they’d be able to get closer to the Intruder before it would start flooding them with radiation. I guess that proves they’ve noticed us, she thought.

  She heaved herself out of the chair and headed out of the cockpit, opening the locker behind the door and pulling out a suit. Scout had explained that it was lined with a boron-enriched inner that would protect her from all but the most powerful bursts of radiation. She pulled the suit up her legs, reflecting that the last person to do this had been a member of Scout’s former crew and dead for decades. Finally, she yanked the helmet from its shelf and dropped it on her seat.

  Hal was already suited up having decided to put his on before they’d entered the system. Arla felt a wave of sadness as he’d obviously done this to avoid the embarrassment of having to ask her to help him. She handed him his helmet and watched as his face disappeared behind the metal and plastic dome.

  Arla hated wearing the suit - it was more bulky than the ship-suits she’d worn on Dawn EVAs and, despite having a climate control system, it felt uncomfortably warm after an hour sitting in it, most of which had been spent watching Hal become more and more confident in handling the ship.

  “I gotta go for a shower,” she said as she lifted herself out of the navigator’s seat again. “Reckon you can manage without me for twenty minutes?”

  Even through the helmet Arla could see Hal’s scowling expression. “I’ll try not to fly us into the sun while you’re away,” he said, broadcasting sarcasm loud and clear.

  Arla lumbered her way through the ship and into the shelter in its belly. Once she’d stepped out of the inner airlock she glanced at Wells who lay exactly as she’d left him. She lost no time peeling the suit off and quickly disrobed before stepping into the shower. It was less than luxurious, but the cold water revived her as she stood beneath the stream wondering what the bloody hell she was doing here. A young woman, a farmer’s daughter, lost in space and facing an encounter with something more deadly than the entire Robot Empire. Without warning she began laughing until she was on the verge of hysteria, only snapping out of it when the timer cut the water off and she was left dripping in the cubicle.

  She stepped out, pulled a towel around her, and found a replacement set of underwear in one of the clothing drawers. She was just fastening the bra when Hal’s voice erupted from the speaker above her, calling her name. Reflexively, she covered herself up with her arms before remembering that it was an audio link only. “What is it?”

  “You’d better get up here. I think they’re trying to talk to us.”

  Encounter

  “What’s going on?”

  Arla slipped back into the navigator’s chair then gazed up at the main cockpit display. The x-ray burst had subsided and they’d both removed their helmets and gloves.

  “The comms channel’s gone crazy,” Hal responded. “Watch.”

  At first, the monitor seemed to be full of random static, but after a few moments Arla began to detect a pattern. “It’s like a heartbeat.”

  “It changes colour from time to time, but there’s a definite regularity to the pulses. I just can’t make any sense of it.”

  “Could it be natural? I mean, pulsars emit regular signals, don’t they?”

  Hal shook his head. “These aren’t regular and they’re coming from the Intruder. Maybe it’s some kind of test.”

  “I wonder whether we want to pass it,” Arla muttered. “I guess we should try to work it out, whether we respond or not. What’s your best guess?”

  “The pulses come in two periods and in groups. Short, short, long - that sort of thing, followed by a pause. Then there’s a longer gap before the pattern begins again.”

  Arla opened the connection to Auxiliary Control. “Doctor, are you getting these signals?”

  “Yes. There’s something familiar about them, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  “Maybe we should begin by recording them - perhaps if we saw them isolated from the noise, they might make more sense,” Arla said.

  After a moment’s quiet that was punctuated only by the sounds of contacts being pressed, McCall said, “Done, I’m recording now. I’ll keep going until I’ve got a complete sequence and then feed it up to you.”

  A few moments later, a series of characters began rolling across the display below the raw signal.

  McCall’s voice erupted from the console. “It’s Morse Code! I knew there was something I recognised. Switching to standard notation.”

  The message changed to show dots and dashes:

  -.. --- / -. --- - / .- .--. .--. .-. --- .- -.-. .... / - .... .. ... / ...- . ... ... . .-.. .-.-.- / - .... .. ... / .. ... / -.-- --- ..- .-. / --- -. .-.. -.-- / .-- .- .-. -. .. -. --. .-.-.-

  “So what does it say?” Arla asked after a few moment’s silence.

  “Give me a minute,” McCall snapped, “I’m looking for a translation table in this damned computer.”

  Arla rubbed her hands together nervously
as she waited for McCall to come back on the line. All she could hear for several minutes was the occasional blip as McCall interacted with her console.

  “Right, I’ve written a quick routine to convert each group of dots and dashes to its equivalent letter. Here it comes. Oh nuts. It says ‘DO NOT APPROACH THIS VESSEL. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING’.”

  “Hold on,” Hal said, his attention suddenly back on the console. “There’s another message.”

  Arla looked up at the display. “Surely that’s just the same one repeated?”

  “No, it’s a new one. The pattern’s different, take it from me.”

  Arla punched the contact. “Doctor, what do you say?”

  “He’s right,” McCall said, not bothering to hide her surprise. “Give me a moment to enter it. Right. Here it is. ‘I, GAIUS, SEND THIS WARNING FOR THE SAKE OF THE SOULS IN THE IMMORTAL ETHER. DO NOT COME HERE.’”

  After a few moments of stunned silence, Arla said, “Doctor, we need to talk.”

  “Are you absolutely sure you programmed your procedure properly?” Arla asked. She was standing beside McCall in the lounge behind the cockpit, examining the translation on a wall display. “I mean, that sounds like something out of history.”

  McCall shrugged. “I’ve double checked the code. I even translated the first few characters by hand and they come out exactly the same.”

  “But Gaius?”

  “I know. It sounds like a name from ancient Italy, or maybe France.”

  Arla threw herself onto a chair and rubbed her eyes. “I’ll take your word for that, my knowledge of Earth history is minimal. Never really interested me, to be honest.”

  “Just as well that it did interest me, then,” McCall said as she settled down beside Arla.

  “So, do we turn around and head back to the gate?”

  McCall gave a little smile. “We both know the answer to that. We can’t go back until we’ve learned more about the Intruder.”

  “We know its name, at least,” Arla said, smirking, “or perhaps the name of a crew member. This is bizarre. I was preparing to meet something entirely alien and instead we have a message in an obsolete code that translates into Galactic Common and contains a name out of the distant past.”

  “Which would be bad enough if it wasn’t wrapped up with a mysterious vessel that pulverises planets.”

  Arla got up, then helped McCall out of her chair. “Right up till this point, I was worried I might do or say something stupid that could have galactic consequences. You know, insult some alien by shaking the wrong tentacle. But I’ve come to realise that I’m so far out of my depth, I might as well go on gut instinct because I have no idea whether anything I do will have an effect or, if it does, what will come of it.”

  “I wouldn’t dwell on it,” McCall said as she headed for the lower deck, “if you’re out of your depth, we’re thrashing in the water beside you. If it’s any comfort, we’ll sink or swim together.”

  Slipping back into the navigator’s chair, Arla decided it wasn’t much comfort to think she’d be taking her friends down with her.

  “We’re going in, then,” Hal said.

  “Yep.”

  The Intruder filled the viewscreen as Scout nudged closer. Its squat, roughly cylindrical shape, deep brown patina and mass of antenna-like protuberances reminded Arla of a beetle. There was no sign of life to it - it simply hung there like death’s scythe, waiting to sweep away everything in its path. It had been 18 hours since the message from Gaius and they’d had no contact from the vessel since. Indeed, there had been no sign it had noticed them at all - no sensor sweeps, no new x-ray beam - it was as if they were too insignificant to pay attention to.

  Arla couldn’t help reflecting that it might have been better if a swarm of fighter ships or missiles had been launched at them. At least that way they could have fled to the gate with good reason. Instead, the Intruder simply sat there, maintaining its position around the gas giant, like a spider patiently waiting for prey to stumble into its web.

  “Is that a docking bay?” Arla said, highlighting and magnifying a section of the dull brown exterior.

  Hal squinted at the screen. “Maybe, though we have no idea if there’s any sort of airlock inside. Or what atmosphere, if any, the ship contains.”

  “Gaius is a human name, so there’s at least some chance it’s breathable. But we’ll be wearing our suits anyway, whether or not we find an airlock.”

  “I guess you’ll want me to stay here,” Hal said.

  “Why?”

  He gestured down at his legs. “I’m not exactly agile.”

  “We don’t know if there will be any gravity over there,” Arla said, “and you have the calipers. They’ll fit inside your spacesuit, won’t they?”

  Hal shrugged. “Maybe, but the last thing you need is me hampering you. I’ll only slow you down.”

  “No, Hal. You don’t understand,” Arla said, grabbing his arm as if to reinforce the point. “I can’t do this alone, I can’t do it with just Doc, I need you with me. You see things I miss. Don’t make me go in there without you. Please.”

  Hal’s eyes met hers. She could see a mixture of hope and suspicion half-hidden in his face. She knew he was wondering whether she was only saying it to make him feel better. She smiled. “Please, Hal.”

  He nodded, then turned curtly back to the display. “Laying in approach vector.”

  Arla watched as the landing bay became bigger and bigger on the screen. Her only role was to call out the readings on her proximity display so Hal could focus entirely on guiding the ship in. It seemed only moments later that they were swallowed up, surrounded by a cave-like interior lit only by the sweeping beams of their searchlight.

  “Good,” Hal said, “there’s a magnetic field here so the interior superstructure must be iron-rich. We can engage the mag-grips in the landing gear and use our boots to explore.”

  With a faint clank, Hal attached Scout to the landing bay, guessing from the orientation of the Intruder which way was likely to be “down”.

  “Well done,” Arla said as Hal breathed out a long sigh. “I’ll leave you to get prepared. I have something I need to do before we go.”

  She heaved herself out of the navigator’s chair and headed into Scout, passing McCall on the way. The doctor was cursing as she waddled along the corridor. “All the grace of a gorilla with lumbago” she muttered.

  Arla found Wells exactly where she’d left him, of course. She looked up at the console. She felt the temptation to wake him now and ask for his advice. It was probably safe for him now they were inside the Intruder - there had been no indication of any radiation since they’d landed. She held back, though. Was it because she still didn’t trust him? Or because she didn’t want to be talked out of her current plans? Or would she consider it a failure if she woke him? Whatever it was, she didn’t want to wake him now. But that didn’t prevent her from making a few modifications before scribbling a message on the display and heading out of the bunker to join Hal and McCall.

  The belly of the beast beckoned.

  Orbis

  Stepping down the ramp into the darkness, Arla cried as she stumbled to the ground, spilling her torch. She scrambled across a surface full of tiny contours and cracks - as if a planet’s crust had been petrified and hauled into place in this hanger.

  “Are you okay?”

  Arla grabbed the torch, then took McCall’s hand. “Yeh, thanks. I always was clumsy.”

  She looked back to where Hal was emerging from the hatch. He was careful flexing each leg and watching it as it clanked down on the metal. They were weightless in the landing bay, secured to the floor by their magboots like great, fleshy balloons ready to be blown away at the slightest breeze. No chance of any wind here, though - they were in a naked vacuum.

  Hal made it to the bottom of the ramp and they used their torches to find a vertical wall.

  “How far, do you think?” Arla said.

  “About a hundred metr
es, I’d guess,” Hal replied. “Hold on, that looks like an airlock hatch.”

  His torch beam illuminated a circular groove in the wall. It certainly looked like an airlock and it struck Arla how incongruous it was to see such an everyday object here on this alien craft. And then she remembered Gaius.

  She began walking towards it - the clank as each boot connected was transmitted to her ears entirely through vibration. It was an odd experience, reminding her more than anything of swimming in a lake. In a flash of memory, she saw her father jumping in after her, the muffled splash knocking her backwards. She remembered her father and felt the panic rise.

  “Arla, are you alright?” McCall asked, reaching out to put her hand on Arla’s shoulder.

  She shook her head and allowed the tears to fall, pooling at the bottom of her helmet. “I’ll be okay,” she managed.

  Hal appeared alongside them both.

  “The only way is forward,” he said, his voice soft and sympathetic. “And anyway, if I stop in these legs, I’m likely to get stuck and I’d rather not have to suffer the embarrassment of being carried by you two.”

  Arla nodded and began moving again, the others flanking her as they walked into the darkness.

  It was an airlock hatch - there could be no doubt of it. A panel embedded in the pitted brown wall flashed into life as Arla ran her gloved hand across it. Three dimensional shapes leapt out and began rotating as if projected by the panel.

  “I guess that’s the control mechanism,” Hal said, “though I’m frakked if I know what it means. I’ve never seen symbols like this before.”

  McCall knelt so that her eyes were at the level of the rotating shapes. “It looks like some sort of alien alphabet. Each symbol represents a command. It’s odd, though.”

  “What’s odd about finding alien symbols on an alien craft?” Arla asked.

  McCall shrugged, though the effect was dampened by her bulky EVA suit. “There’s something familiar about it, that’s all. I can’t help feeling as though I’ve seen letters like this before.”