by Rob Buckman
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“We in position, Janice?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Helm, you ready?”
“Aye-aye, sir, way point set and automatic transfer activated.”
“All right, tighten your safety straps people, here we go - helm, take us to within fifty nautical miles of that ship and hold her there if you can. If we start to slide either way, trigger the warp transfer without my order, is that clear?”
“Aye, sir, I’ll get us out of here if that happens.”
“One thing, Skipper, we have no way of knowing if this WP takes us back to Earth space, or some other place.”
“We’ll have to take the chance, Pete. Can’t afford to launch a scout torp here. It’ll just get sucked into that black hole like the last one.”
“Aye-aye, Skipper.”
Everyone was glad they were sitting or lying down as the artificial gravity increased, and more than one person groaned softly. Mike smiled and shifted comfortably around in his seat. To him, 1.3 gravity’s was normal for his home world.
“Sound the alarm, Pete.”
“Aye, sir, sounding the alarm.” He hit a key and alarm bells began ringing all over the ships as all the hatched closed and sealed themselves. Pete watched his consult as row by row the indicators turned green. “Green across the board, Skipper, and the ship is sealed.”
“Right, let’s get it done, helm - engage, slow ahead.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Conner lifted the control yoke and called for ‘slow ahead’ on the ships telegraph. The bells rang and answered as the ‘Nemesis’ moved towards Enright’s warp point and the mystery ship.
“Approaching warp point event horizon.” Cooper called, sounding out the distance as the gap closed. “Twenty thousand miles and closing – fifteen thousand nautical miles and closing – ten thousand nautical miles and closing!” What happened next could only be described as a nightmare as the ship started shaking again.
It then seemed to twist on itself, first one way then the other. Even after all their precautions, things still shot about the Bridge, the odd stylus, or coin someone dropped, not that they had time to notice as everyone one held on for dear life. They were all strapped into their seats, and the belts tried ripping themselves from their anchors. Someone screamed, but whether it was a man or woman, Mike couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter. He felt like screaming himself.
“5000 nautical miles and closing.” Cooper yelled above the noise.
How Conner managed to hold onto the control yoke was a mystery, but he did, forcing the nose up and away from the black hole, then away from the star. Through blurred vision, Mike saw him push the engines to Max, calling for every bit of power he could get. His heart went into his throat as he thought of them sliding into the black hole. If anything, the bucking and shaking got worse. The voracious monster tried sucking them in, and their massive engines drove them forward across the edge of the event horizon as Conner fought the ship to safety. Mike now knew exactly what it felt like to be inside a blender on puree. This was the ultimate test of Cynthia and her yard crew work, if they could survive this without the ship ripping itself apart, they could stand anything. With a last buck and twist it was over and they were cruising free. Conner immediately backed off on the power and brought them to a stop less than one hundred miles from the ship.
“Good God! We made it.” Pete whispered, his voice sounding like a rusty hinge.
“Ops, Bring the gravity and inertia field back to normal, Gable.” Mike ordered, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs.
“I’ll do it, sir, he’s out cold.” Janice called, moving to Gable’s station.
“Shit! Get the medic up here on the double.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Pete answered.
“This is the Captain, all division chiefs report any damage as soon as possible.” Whoever placed that ship here, knew exactly where the sweet spot was between the two giants. In some ways, it was like being in the eye of a hurricane, with everything still and peaceful.
“Unsealing, ship, sir.”
“Good, the only thing I can add to that is the traditional Navy salute, splice the mainbrace.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Mike felt like he needed a drink himself after that, but instead he turned the Bridge over to Pete he took off for an inspection tour.
An hour later he ended up in his cabin and had that drink, sitting down with a sigh. They made it with no major damage, and just a few minor injuries, for which he thanks the gods and Cynthia for.
Gable had bounced his head off the inside of his helmet, and other than a nasty bump and a little blood, he was all right. They had one broken arm and a few lacerations as a tally, but it would take time to clean up the mess in some of the compartment, more than one person had thrown up. Within hours they were standing off the strange ship at 50 miles, all the video and recording equipment running.
“God, she big.”
“About the biggest ship I’ve seen, sir.”
“Anything on her composition, Cooper?”
“No, sir, the instruments can’t identify what the hull is made of.”
“I wonder if we can get aboard.” Mike mused, seeing several people turn and look at him. “We have to go aboard sometime.” He said in defense. That brought a few smiles.
“Put an away team together, Pete, myself included.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Pete smiled, he could have taken bets on that, if he could have found someone dumb enough to take it.
* * * * * *
On a closer inspection from the assault shuttle, they found she wasn’t as pristine as they first thought. The hull had several large holes in her, indication some compartment were open to space.
“There’s definitely something still working in there, Skipper, some sort of shield.”
“Can we get through it?”
“I think so, I suspect it only affects large objects or high speed particles, such as meteors or radiation.”
“Edge close, Chief, let see if we can land on the hull without setting off an alarm.”
It was a thought, if this was a warship and still operational to some degree, a point defense system might still be working. Conner edges the shuttle closer with no reaction, and with a nod from Mike he took her closer still. They’d come in over the stern to take a look at the drive unit, but there was nothing familiar about them. Instead of the usual drive plates these had fins and nodules. The fins looked as if they were hinged, adding to the speculation they were used for vector thrust to turn the ship, something like a rudder. Nothing they saw made much sense, the bumps and protrusions looked out of place, and if they were weapons pods as the Chief suggested, there was nothing to support it. No barrels sticking out, no identifiable lasers or missiles.
“There’s a docking port over there, sir, or a hatch of some sort.” Sally Goldman pointed off to the side.
“I’d rather go in through one of the holes, sir, less chance of setting something off.” Conner said.
“Intruder alarm system?”
“Or something nastier.”
“I’ll go with you, Conner, set her down near that opening.” Mike pointed ahead.
“Aye-aye, sir.” The shuttle landed with a slight bump, then settled. “Sorry about that, didn’t expect an Ag field.”
“So, the Ag system is still functioning, that’s good, I hate floating about at the best of times, but especially not inside an alien star ship.”
They exited the shuttle, each with lights strapped to their arms as well as their helmet lights. Leading the way, Mike headed for the opening in the side of a hundred foot high protrusion, probing into the inky darkness.
“There’s a big hole in the floor, so we’ll have to use the jet packs.”
Beside the spare air bottles and assorted tools, Sergeant Rice had loaded the jet packs thinking they might come in handy. After everyone was sealed inside their hard suit and each checked the other out. Sally decompressed the squ
ad bay and lowered the rear ramp as they picked up their assigned pack and tramped silently out behind Mike. Above and to one side, the Class III giant star lit their way and thankfully, the face shields polarized to compensate for the glare. The silence inside their helmets was broken by the slight hiss of air moving in and out as the breathed, and the muttered comments coming over the net. It only took a minute to reach the rent in the ship’s hull, and Mike stopped at the edge and looked down into the stygian darkness below.
“Okay people, here we go.”
“Right behind you, sir.” Mike adjusted his jet-pack and stepped off into the darkness. For a moment he hovered, then moved the control slightly so he drifted down.
Whatever had hit the ship had plowed its way through three decks before stopping, or dissipating, and by the amount of collateral damage to the wall and deck, it had to be some sort of energy weapons. His feet touched the buckled deck and he gradually adjusted the controls to zero.
“Odd. It feels like one gee, Earth norm.” He told the rest of the team as they landed beside him. “Stay together, and no wandering off people.”
“Copy that, Skipper.” They found what looked like a passageway leading into the ship, and walked out of the blast area and the moment they did the ceiling started to glow. It wasn’t lights, as they knew them, as they were no bulbs, tubes or anything resembling a light panel. The ceiling just glowed with soft pearlescent light that was easy on the eye. For a moment they all stopped, waiting to see if anything else happened, but nothing did and they breathed again.
“I don’t know how long this ship has been here, sir, but whoever built her, they made it to last.” Janice commented.
“Yes, I agree, don’t think the lights on the Nemesis would still work after a hundred years or so, let alone two hundred that we know of.”
“It saves us probing about in the dark with flashlights, Skipper.”
“That’s not much help, I can’t make head or tail of what I’m seeing anyway.” Mike grouched.
He was right, other than the passageway, nothing they saw looked familiar. They walked for an hour, periodically checking in with the ship as they looked in compartment after compartment. A few did reveal its secrets, as they found bunks and chairs in some. The seats were larger than they were used to, showing the species that build this ship were at least two or three feet taller than humans. Janice found a uniform, or coverall and held it up.
“Two arms and two legs, so that tells us they were humanoid at least.” Mike picked up something that looked like a book, but the writing, if it was writing was just squiggles to him. He placed it in his side bag and walked on.
“If you see any small items, collect them as you go, or leave them out in the hallways so we can pick them up on the way back, but be careful.”
Many of the rooms they entered made them feel like midgets, vast open spaces, and empty of anything, the deckhead and end bulkhead lost in the distance. As yet, they hadn’t found a part of the ship that wasn’t airless, until they reached a heavy door barring their progress. Peering through the round port Mike tried to see what was beyond, but his wrist light wouldn’t penetrate more than a few feet. As far as he could tell this was an air lock, and the passageway continued on after that, so they looked around for a control unit. A simple handle protruding from the wall seemed like the only thing that might be a control, but it took three of them to shift it. Panting with exertion it finally slid along its slot. They felt the vibration as the door rumbled open, and with a nod from Mike, they entered. A similar control was on the other side and another door, but this time the handle moved with only slight pressure.
“Time and space have got to the other one.”
“It's a wonder we moved it at all.” The moment the door close, a magenta light began flashing on a panel over the operating handle, and continued for almost a minute.
“I think the airlock is filling, sir.”
“But with what? - Janice?”
“Checking, sir.” She answered, pulling an air sampling unit out of a pocket on her battle suit. She worked the unit for a moment.
“It says air, sir, but I wouldn’t chance breathing it, the proportions are wrong.”
“I agree, keep your face shield closed for now.”
The magenta, light turn to orange, and Mike assumed that it meant the air pressure on each side of the other door was the same. Grasping the handle he edged it across the slot. The second door opened with a slight sigh as the air equalized, but there was no extreme difference. Mike slid it all the way across and the door rumbled open.
“These are blast doors' sir, and three times as thick as ours.” Conner observed.
“Whoever they were fighting must be a tough lot.”
“I hope we don’t run into them.”
The passageway on the other side was spotlessly clean, with carpeted desks, and here and there they could see pictures or murals on the walls. What they represent was any one guess. Mike had Janice video them anyway. They search for another two hours before Mike called a halt, knowing this wasn’t getting him very far. There was just too much ship to search and too few people. He'd have to bring over a good portion of the Nemesis crew to search her properly. All of the objects they brought back went into the decontamination units, as did they when they came back aboard. After everyone had taken a shower and cleared up, they met again in the Wardroom for a conference. Mike opened the ‘All stations’ comm link so all the crew knew what was going on, and what they’d seen.
“This ship is a treasure house of artifacts, and we could spend a year exploring her, but we don’t have the time.”
“Come on, Skipper, we have to explore her more than this.” Pete Standish put in, obviously eager to get over there himself for a look.
“I agree, so I’ve decided to take the shuttle and the ships launch the next time and as many people as we can fit.”
“Great!”
“Hold on,” He said, holding his hand up to stop the babble of excitement, “this will be a sweep to pick up any portable object and video record as much as we can. We will also try to find, and get onto the command deck and computer system, if there is one, and download what we can, if possible.”
“And after that?”
“We head for home and have them bring back a few experts.”
“I hate to say it, Skipper, but unless we can find a way to use this WP from both sides, we are no better off than before.”
“If this ship is causing the problem, we may have to find a way of moving her.”
“Jesus! How on Earth do we do that.”
“If we try to move her, Skipper, she may end up going down the black hole.” Janice put in, “we’d lose any alien technology into the bargain.”
“She may have jump engine herself, and we might be able to take her home with us!” Someone else put in.
“Right, and you have just won the lottery.” Someone joked.
“There’s no telling if we can move her, let alone transfer her to Sol system, so let’s put that aside for the moment until we know more about her.”
“I can just see the Sirriens letting us keep her for long. One look and they’d start a war just to get their dirty hands on her.”
“You could be right.”
“What about taking her to Avalon, sir.” Cooper put in.
“That will mean that this prize and any salvage right will be in the hands of the Avalon Government. That’s if they have deep space tugs big enough to handle something this size.”
“What about salvage right if we do that?”
“Good point. Does anyone have a problem with that?” He looked up at the people around the table, then at the video pick up. “Speak up if you do, as I don’t want anyone complaining later that they weren’t asked.” No one complained, but he could sense the excitement at his announcement that he would be taking a substantial number of the crew to search the alien ship.
“Pete, you’d better figure out how many we can take, plus
extra air, and start a lottery to see who goes.”
“I take it I can get in on this as well?” He asked, and Mike laughed.
“Yes, Pete, you can put your name in as well for the next trip.”
It turned out that they could get thirty people in the shuttle, and ten in the ship's launch, forty four in all, including the pilots and co-pilots. They filled every available liquid air tank they could find and loaded them aboard, as well as every available bag, satchel and back pack. This time, Mike looked for and found a small hole near the bow, high up on the hull, near what he hoped might be the Bridge or CIC. The damage inside was confined to the one compartment, but they had to cover the opening with a temporary seal and pressurize the room before they could jimmy the door open. The seal bulged as the pressure between the two equalized, and Mike got them out of the room and the door closed before it blew. Once in the main corridor they searched for an outer hatch, finally finding and enormous airlock. This could hold twenty people at the time, and within thirty minutes everyone was aboard and assembled. As before, the lights, or illumination came on, and splitting them up into groups of three he sent them off to search the ship. He didn’t have to add the warning to watch their step, Pete had given everyone a lecture about that before they boarded.
