Errant Contact

by T. Michael Ford

  They cautiously looked over the edge and then back upward to see if they could see the top. At this level, they should be able to as this shaft only went up six more levels.

  “Looks like an elevator shaft; but Kodo, where is the bottom?” Drik took something out of his pack, a small rock about the size of the first digit of a human finger, and looked at me. “May I?” I nodded in acquiescence. He released it, peering over the threshold to see how far it would drop. I watched their stunned faces as it continued to fall and fall, before finally hitting bottom with a distant metallic ping.

  Kalaya fed me the numbers I needed so they could grasp the size needed. “It’s a 350-meter drop to the lowest deck.”

  I watched with pride as they gaped in wonderment and disbelief. “That’s like a quarter mile down! If that’s how deep it is, then do I even want to know how long it is?”

  “Probably not, but I will say that she may be big but she doesn’t have the tonnage that you might expect. Most of the forward compartments are actually hollow with only a few beams and metallic sheathing for strength, but you won’t have access to those areas so it doesn’t matter. What does is getting one level down. Right now, the lift is without adequate power so you three will need to climb down the service ladder to the level below to access the dormitory area and stay there until I return.”

  “You want us to climb down a ladder with a three hundred meter drop below us…in the dark?” Max squeaked. “Are you insane?”

  I nodded to myself. “Probably, but believe me, I am not as crazy as my partner floating around in my head. When you get to the doorway of the next level down, you should be able to stand on the apron and pry the doors open with your fingers. That door isn’t a containment bulkhead like this one.”

  “Hey! I am not crazy!” shouted Kalaya. “Ok, so maybe I am, but what does that have to do with anything?”

  I chuckled at her comment as I readied myself to do something stupid.

  “Crazy comment aside, where are you going exactly?” Drik questioned, still looking down the dark shaft.

  “Two hundred meters down to Reactor Two. Hopefully, I can get power on today so full lights and life support can be brought online.” With that, I stepped off into the dark abyss.

  Falling was fun while it lasted, but I needed to start slowing down. I had discovered one day that the standard issue repulsion belt designed to brace a crewmember in the event of collision also worked great in other hazardous locations. The belt emitted a magnetic field that held the user in place and kept everything metal away. Since this entire shaft was metal, it worked like a clog in a pipe. I activated the button and, thankfully, slowed to a stop a few levels above my target location, where I reached out and grabbed onto the ladder bolted to the outside wall.

  “Quite the gamble there, but it seems to have paid off for you,” Kalaya mused.

  “Thank you. I am actually glad to see that my mad stunt skills didn’t atrophy in my sleep.”

  “Don’t thank me, I was betting on the floor,” she growled angrily. Ouch.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Laree

  Somehow, we all made it safely down to the next level. Our headband lights helped, but it was still dark as coal in here and all the doors in the hallways seemed to be locked. There wasn’t really much we could do but wait.

  “Think we should go down there and help him?” I asked.

  “Help him? Are you nuts? You heard the man; he has voices in his head, for crying out loud! The guy spent way too long in that pod, his brain must have rotted or something!” Max shouted.

  “You think he is crazy after all you have seen already?”

  “We haven’t exactly seen anything cool. He has a big ship, so what! I bet we can build one bigger if we really wanted to. I’m mean, sure, if Kodo has actually done all the things he claims, then I’m sure he was a smart guy, but now he’s just crazy.”

  “Actually, I have been thinking on that,” Drik said quietly.

  “You have been quiet for a long time now,” I observed.

  “Been doing a lot of thinking. When we first got here, we assumed this was a cave burrowed into a ridgeline right?”

  “Yeah, but what are you getting at?”

  “What if it wasn’t a ridgeline? What if was the ship?”

  The ridgeline was the ship? That cannot be right. “You’re joking, right? That would make this ship over two miles long. There’s no way it could be that large. How would it even be able to move? Probably would have snapped in half on entering the atmosphere. It just can’t be done.”

  “Maybe not, but we passed what looked like one of those you-are-here maps. I couldn’t read the markings, but I am positive that the hole we came through was in the side of the ship, not the top like we thought.”

  “Meaning that the ridgeline had either formed around the ship…”

  “Or it is the ship.” We both stared blankly over the side, back into the pit.

  “Um, guys, care to explain your fun science experiments crap to the rest of the party?” Max complained.

  “In a nutshell, Maxwell, this ship is large enough that the entire Third Fleet could fit inside it!”

  “Well…dang…”

  Chapter 7

  Kodo

  “You do remember how to restart the reactors, don’t you?” asked Kalaya in a skeptical tone.

  “Of course I do,” I complained. Actually, I had no freaking idea what the hell I was doing, but the navy used them, so how hard could it be?

  “I’ll give you a hint then, the thing goes in the slot,” she said anxiously.

  “Wow, only you could make a standard engineering function sound dirty.”

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  “Well, helpful isn’t panting down my neck while I’m trying to work,” I retorted.

  “That’s not panting, that’s my stomach growling.”

  “Ok, let’s get back on focus. What do I have to do here?”

  “I would walk you through it, but the cameras in that area are shut down and I only have minimal backup power. Of course, once you get it up and running, I can easily walk you through how to start one up.”

  “Kind of pointless at that juncture, though.”

  “Not my problem, you’re the tech.”

  “Thanks, your moral support today is just phenomenal.”

  I continued walking down the darkened passageways to Reactor Two, manually overriding the doors and propping them open as I went. Reaching the reactor, I entered the control room overlooking the actual core. The room below was good-sized with only one heavy door and the main attraction rising out of the center of the room. At the moment, the metallic column that reached to the ceiling wasn’t that impressive, but soon it would be an unbelievable sight.

  A set of lockers on the back wall contained the radiation abatement suits needed to enter the room below. I walked over and opened the them; good, there was still one in here. I would have hated to have to go to one of the other reactor sites. It would have taken hours to get there without power and the doors locked like this.

  These suits were built to wear over other clothing, thankfully, so could just put it on. Their design was similar to full battle armor with the heat shielding and required strength. Unlike military armor, however, they did not have ballistic shields and were self-contained with their own oxygen and other onboard cooling systems.

  Suited up, I made my way down a ramp to an airlock that led me into the core. It took quite some time in that bulky suit to get the doors open and closed again, but I finally stood in the main chamber.

  “I am in the main chamber.”

  “Good for you. What do you want from me, a prize?”

  “Directions would be nice.”

  “You built this ship, and you don’t know how the reactors work?”

  “Hey, these are standard issue reactors from our merchant marine ships. I didn’t need to change anything about them, so I just took into account their output, calcul
ated how many I would need, and worked with that. I really didn’t care how they worked as long as they gave me the power.”

  “Fine. I have accessed the manual, so I’ll try to walk you through it. Could be a bit complicated, though, there are a whole five steps…hope you’re up to it.”

  “Just tell me already.”

  “Ok, first, find the manual extraction gantry. Should be a large claw-like thing on tracks.” I found what she was talking about in a retention slot built into the wall and slid it out with a lot of effort. When it reached the end of the track nearest the reactor, it snapped into the locked position.

  “Ok, found it, what next?”

  “Before we continue, could you reach up and tap on that camera remote to your left?” I did as she asked and was rewarded by a long dead LED spitefully powering up. “Much better. Normally, you use the extractor to take the old core out, but I suspect that the old one is completely burned up. When Royson did his emergency shutdown, it probably cooled unevenly and turned to ash.” I examined the platform; there was indeed nothing but some vague residue on the housing.

  “Looks burned up to me.”

  “Good. There should be fresh cores in the containment panels built into the walls.”

  The panels in question were easy to spot; there were a bunch of them. I opened one clear, inch-thick glass door, revealing the unimpressive black ball that they contained. Pinning the door open, I returned to the extraction machine and sat down on the small operator's seat. Normally, you merely had to indicate which fuel cell you wanted and push a button. Without power, however, it was going to be more complicated. Fortunately, our people recognized that shit happened occasionally and built in manual systems as well. That’s not to say they are easy. With a sigh, I used my gauntlet and unbolted three brightly colored and placarded panels on the side of the central support column. Setting them aside, I slid out the heavy duty gear levers and snapped them into position.

  “On the bright side, this should give your muscles a nice workout.”

  “How is that a bright side? I’m not exactly in top form; this is going to hurt!” I protested.

  “No, you misunderstand, the bright side is now that you fixed my camera, I get to watch,” she chuckled evilly.

  Reaching out, I grasped the first handle and started cranking. The claw arm of the unit could be maneuvered through the x-y-z axis of motion using the three levers. It took a lot of cranking and manipulation, but I finally managed to center the claw over the ball, which was about the size of my head. Seizing it, I lifted it up off the retention pad.

  The first thing I noticed was that moving the arm, which had been difficult before, was now much, much harder. No amount of grunting and leveraging with my legs made the process go any faster. Of course, I wasn’t providing all the power, the cranks that tortured me so were connected to gears which were connected to even more enormous gears in the flooring below.

  “You’re doing great, Kodo.”

  “How heavy is this thing?” I gasped between my teeth as I continued to strain against the cranks.

  “I’ll tell you when you’ve finished. I’m monitoring your vital signs, and your core temperature is rising precipitously. If it gets much higher, you’ll need to return to the control room and strip off that suit to cool down. In fact, strictly for health reasons, you might need to get completely naked.”

  “No need,” I snorted tiredly, too exhausted to muster up a comeback. “There, it’s in place! Releasing the core and retracting the arm now.”

  “Aww…you’re no fun.” Magnetics held the sphere suspended over the platform as I pulled back the gantry and scrupulously returned everything to the condition I found it. My arms and legs felt like I had run miles carrying three times my body weight. “Once you’re done with that, walk up to the control room and hit the manual ignition, simple as that.”

  I looked up at the control room windows and my heart sank. “Yeah, it’s not going to be that simple.”

  “Why not? It’s just a button.”

  “There are humans in the control room.”

  “Ah hell.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Laree

  The climb down was horrible; my body felt like a big blob of jelled pudding right now. Had it not been for Dirk’s smart thinking to bring the climbing gear, I would never have made it. Hell, I wouldn’t have made it at all if it weren’t for those ex-military trainers cracking the whip on the flight here. I might actually have to thank them if we ever get out of here.

  I was exhausted and breathing heavily as Drik and I continued down the corridor that stretched out before us. “You sure he went this way?” I asked between raspy gasps.

  “Not for certain, no; but this is the only path with open doors, so it’s our only option.”

  In the light put out by our headband lamps, I could see him pause and stand perfectly still for a few moments. Something was bothering him, something important.

  “You alright? You’re zoning out on me again.”

  He cleared his head, glancing at me in apology. “Sorry, been thinking again.”

  “I can see that. I’ll assume you’re thinking about our new ‘friend’?” He nodded. “You think he is dangerous?” Nodding once again. “Should we go back, then?”

  “Dangerous, yes; but I do not think he will hurt us or anything like that.”

  Well, that’s a start. Based on what I had seen, I didn’t really want to get on this guy’s bad side if we’re going to last two more weeks here. “Explain what you mean by that.”

  “I am just thinking of the impact someone like him could have on our people. Just think of the damage it could cause. History, science, religion, all would be put into question, but what truly concerns me is this second person he was talking about. Is there really someone else here or is he actually crazy.”

  “The hand scanners don’t pick up anyone else. The only living thing in the ship is him,” I whispered.

  “Yes, but the range on our scanners isn’t that long. I doubt we would be able to pick up anything further away than a hundred meters or so in this ship; there’s just too much interference from the metals. If there is someone else, we will just have to hope that the other one is as agreeable as this one is or we are in a lot of trouble.”

  I was about to ask another question when his hand shot out in front of me, stopping me. “Shh, I think we’re there,” he whispered.

  Through the door ahead of us, I could make out the faint glow of another light. Entering the room, I could see it was a control room of some kind. There was another door on the left and a big window straight ahead. In front of the window stood a large console with multitudes of inactive displays and buttons. The display stations all had large comfy-looking raised stools that had controls of some kind integrated into the arms. I tried to determine their purpose as Drik walked in further and looked through the window. With a hiss, he motioned for me to come forward as well. The window overlooked a large circular room below with only one real feature in the entire room, a shiny mettalic pillar that stretched from the floor to the ceiling.

  Next to that large column, Kodo was working in some kind of hazardous duty suit, probably to safely handle the black ball that he was loading into the pillar. I was still a little rattled by Drik’s musings about Kodo’s mental state, but for some reason, seeing that he was taking the time to follow routine procedures made me feel better. Perhaps he wasn’t insane. Suddenly he looked up here, undoubtedly seeing us staring down at him.

  “Oops.”

  “Yeah, he’s spotted us alright.”

  “What should we do? Leave?”

  “No point, he already knows we were here. Might as well wait and see what happens.”

  We watched silently as Kodo marched through a door in the lower chamber, soon emerging from the one on the left wall. His helmet was off and he was visibly pissed at us.

  “What is wrong with you people? I thought I told you to stay in the dorm area until I go
t back! This is not a safe area,” he growled.

  “Actually, you said nothing of the sort,” I retorted matter-of-factly. Although, that was probably not a smart thing to say when faced with an enraged alien.

  “Oh?” he said, crossing his arms. “And what about the red doors? I know I told you about them!”

  Oh…crap, yeah, we passed through few of those on the way down, didn’t we? Like a half dozen of them. “Um…sorry about that, we were just curious about what you were doing,” I said.

  It looked like he was going to blow up on us, but his eyes went distant, most likely talking to himself again. This time, however, he snickered softly. “You people have a saying, I believe, ‘curiosity killed the cat.’ I’m not entirely sure what a cat is, vermin of some sort, I suppose, but you would do well to take heed of that warning.” He seemed to have calmed down quite a bit and even took the time to get out of the suit, which was nearly dripping with sweat. He placed it neatly into a storage locker; one thing about him, he wasn’t a slob.

  “Cats are not vermin, they’re cute! Hey…how would you even know about our sayings?” I tilted my head, puzzled.

  He smiled and tapped the side of his head. “Never mind, time is short and, apparently, I could use a second set of hands anyways.” He turned to Drik. “Go over to the left side of this control console.” Nodding, Drik did as instructed as Kodo went to the right side. He knelt down with Drik mirroring his actions. “Ok, use the latch to take the covers off.” With a clunk sound, both of them took off the covers that concealed the mass of wiring and obscure parts under the console.

  “Alright,” Kodo continued, “inside you should see a large red cylinder coming out of the floor.” Drik nodded. “Don’t touch it.” Drik’s hand instantly shot back from the panel with horror on his face. “You would call it a capacitor or something similar. But it works more like your batteries than that; just a much larger capacity and dump rate.”

  Shaking off the close call, Drik looked around the console at Kodo. “And these things will have the power needed to start the ship back up?”