by Trevor Wyatt
I puff out air. “It has to be someone else.”
“The fleet won’t wait for you much longer,” Ashely notes.
My comm link beeps. It’s Dr. Taft. “Go ahead, Taft.”
“Sir, I’m picking up something.”
I turn and head out onto the CNC, Ashely in close tow.
“Captain on deck!” comes the security personnel’s voice
Still headed toward my seat, I say, “Put it on screen.”
The screen dissolves into the image of star glittering space and a ship the same shape as the Mariner.
It is nothing like any Sonali ship the Terran Armada has ever seen.
Chapter 29
Ashley
“The Mariner,” I say rather stupidly. But there are no snide remarks in response. Jeryl, I see, has halted dead in his tracks, staring at the image onscreen. What we’re seeing simply can’t be real. The Mariner was reduced to floating rubble. I saw it. Jeryl saw it; one or two of the original crew of the Seeker who are also aboard this ship saw it as well.
Jeryl shakes off his astonishment and drops heavily into his command chair. “What the hell is that?” he raps out to no one and everyone. “Alert stations, everyone. Get ready to raise screens on my order. Taft, I want answers and I want them now.”
“Sir!” The CNC buzzes with action and muted conversation between stations as the crew start scanning the stranger with their instruments.
Jeryl, who has no specific scientific responsibilities, acting as he does as a clearinghouse for all data in order to formulate the ship’s response, sits rigid in his chair. I have no part in the science section, either, but it’s my job to make sure that their investigations proceed smoothly so I am watching my instruments as the scans continue.
Preliminary data starts to come in. What we are seeing isn’t a ghost of course; it’s a real physical object. But how? Where did it come from? Are the Sonali taunting us? I scowl at the thought. No, I don’t think so. They have been steadfast in their insistence that they had nothing to do with the original Mariner’s destruction, and I believe them.
This is someone else. As I have that realization, my skin breaks out in goose bumps. Someone else... destroyed the Mariner. Someone else... has been watching us and the Sonali slug it out over the past several years.
Who? Why?
I think we may be about to find out. Data from the preliminary scans continue to come in. I am seeing an odd pattern on the atomic level that tickles my memory.
Suddenly my station blinks a number of red lights. “Damn,” I say. “They’re painting us with ranging lasers.” Maybe they thought the scanning beams were hostile.
But I don’t think so. Why I don't think so, I can’t say.
“Screens up,” Jeryl orders. “Helm, return the favor. Get their range.”
Without consciously thinking through my hunch, I open a station to Jeryl’s station.
“Sir? I want to bounce a spectro laser off that thing,” I say.
“What?” I hear his intake of breath. “Don’t you think that might be construed as something of a hostile act? They didn’t like the scanners much.”
I ignore the sarcasm. “No. I don’t think so.”
He is silent for a moment. “What’s your game, Lieutenant?”
“Not my game, sir. Not mine at all. They aren’t going to do a thing. I’ll bet my life on it.”
“And everyone else’s aboard this ship!” He mutters something else under his breath. “All right. Go ahead.”
My fingers ripple over my controls as I call up a micro-pulse laser shot at the bogey. This is one thing I love about Jeryl; he listens to his officers. He doesn’t argue. He trusts us. He trusts me. It’s not a marriage thing. It’s a captain-and-crew thing.
Moments later I have my answer. I blow out a lungful of air I hadn’t known I was holding. Tamping down my excitement, I call Jeryl back.
“Look at this,” I say, and send a section of the original scans we got from the Mariner debris years ago. “Look at the energy signature.”
“This is old news.” He sounds disappointed. “We know that whatever weapon was used practically transmuted the wreckage into different elements. Its spectrogram changed completely.”
“Now look.” I superimpose the data from my new spectro scans on top of the old one.
“I—” he begins, and then falls silent. The laser has vaporized a miniscule portion of the stranger’s outer hull, and our instruments have examined the little cloud of gas, tasting and probing it for its constituents and their energy signatures.
This would almost certainly be taken as an attack, if the bogey were so inclined. But it didn’t return “fire.”
The spectrograms are almost identical.
There are increased bands in the silicon range, something you’d never normally see in a Terran ship, but which showed up in the original wreckage. Completely nonsensical, an artifact of the massive energy beam that blasted the Mariner.
Unless it wasn’t. Unless it was something else.
“It’s a message,” I say. “This boggart is telling us something.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, it’s not a Sonali ship. It’s certainly not the Mariner, returned to life. It’s real, but it isn’t real. It’s altered matter, sir. We’re looking at an actual physical ghost you can touch, sort of like a solid hologram.”
“There’s no such thing!”
“It appears that there is. This is a technology we’ve never seen, something like our resequencers. And entire starship made of synthetic matter, constructed with the use of supercharged photons.”
Jeryl is silent. Then he opens a PA channel to the entire ship and describes what I have discovered. “Get me confirmation," he says. “But no more lasers.”
I allow myself a small smile. I don’t think we have to worry about lasers. The bogey would have destroyed us already, had it wanted to.
Confirmation trickles in from other stations. The bogey represents a state of matter, a level of technology, we haven’t seen before. Whoever is responsible for it has some serious chops.
Jeryl comes back online to me. “Message all our ships,” he says. “Tell them we think we’ve found the party responsible for the Mariner’s destruction, and tell them to stand by while we proceed with our investigation.”
I do so, and almost at once responses from the fleet start coming in. They all want to know what is happening. I answer as best I can, telling them to maintain alert while we collate our information.
Minutes pass in the CNC as we try to figure out what we are dealing with. The bogey does indeed seem to be a sort of solid hologram. Does that mean it’s masking something? Or is it a temporary construct, to be used and discarded once it fulfills its purpose?
Jeryl has our screens raised, but we’re not making any other overt acts. Our scanners have taken in as much data as they can, and the computers are chewing on it. While they do so, we chew our fingernails. At least I do... it’s an old habit, and I thought I’d broken it.
Apparently not.
After half an hour or so, Jeryl has apparently had enough. “Ashley,” he says to me over a private channel, “this is getting us nowhere. Someone has to make the first move.”
“I know,” I say.
He switches to the ship-wide channel. “Comm, hail that ship.”
“Sir.”
I twine my fingers together. My hands are sweaty.
“Response coming in, sir,” says Comm.
“On screen.”
An image swims into view on my monitor. It’s... humanoid. It’s not Sonali. I’m looking at an enormous round head, with a fleshy snout fringed by short, thick finger-like things. Its skin is a deep purplish-pink in color, like a bad bruise. Above and beside the snout are two perfectly round yellow eyes with black pupils. Two pointed ears adorn the head at the same level as the being’s eyes. Above the snout the bulging cranium is sprinkled with several warty bumps, beside which two long, jointed antenn
ae hang down over the face. The head sits, neckless, on a pair of broad shoulders.
A sort of green skullcap covers the head and is joined to a lighter green tunic like a uniform.
The being raises a limb, apparently in greeting. It’s very long, with an elbow further along toward a forearm shorter than ours. It has three fingers and a thumb.
Jeryl’s voice is perfectly level, and he sounds as though he meets a new species every day—maybe twice a day. Ho hum.
“I am Captain Jeryl Montgomery of the Terran Hegemony starship Seeker,” he says. My mind flashes back to our initial encounter with the Sonali. He used almost identical words to hail them. “We are here investigating the disappearance of one of our ships. I see that you have knowledge of that craft,” he concludes, with irony in his voice.
The new fellow blinks slowly. His lids slide in and out from the side, not the top and bottom, and we hear a tik-tik over the speakers. He says nothing, but regards us with an otherwise unwavering and unreadable gaze.
“This position represents our lost ship’s last known coordinates,” Jeryl goes on, keeping his sangfroid. “I’d be very interested to hear what you have to say about this matter.”
Chapter 30
Jeryl
Relief.
That’s what I’m feeling right now. But not just that – there’s also anger, and all of it is directed at the image on the screen. In there, the thing that killed everyone aboard the Mariner stares back at me.
Yes, I’ve been party to committing acts of war. I’ve been part of raids where the Union has sent ships to glass Sonali words.
Yes, the Sonali have done the same to us.
But this being in front of me. Though they haven’t said anything – I know they were responsible for the billions of dead in the galaxy because of this pointless war.
We’ve managed to link our comms to the alien spaceship, but now the damn thing just stares back at me in complete silence. I think back to the argument I had with the first Sonali captain I ever met, and I’m not sure if that’s going to happen in here again.
I doubt we’ll have that kind of time.
Everyone is probably hounding the communications officer for a piece of my time. They want to know exactly what it is that we found. They want to know whether to get over here to bombard another species. They want to know what to do next. Some are probably even contacting the Armada HQ to advise them on my current situation.
Despite all that, I never take my eyes off the humanoid creature on the screen. It doesn’t to speak or engage me in any way – it just stares back at me.
I have played this game over and over again. First with the Outers during our border skirmishes before the war; then with some space pirates, who shamelessly operate even during the war (there are rumors that some pirates even sell to Sonali). Then with the Sonali, both the one I met in this region and the ones I met and destroyed following that.
I am a seasoned poker player. I refuse to be bullied into nervousness by the power of silence. Even though time is running short, I position myself like I have all the time in the world. It’s not like that thing knows that my time is limited.
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” I say with a lot more force and vigor. “Are you responsible for the destruction of the Mariner, a Terran Armada starship that was investigating a scientific phenomenon in this quadrant five years ago?”
Right in front of our eyes, a second occupant of the vessel comes into view, handing over to the one I am addressing some sort of device. It disappears from view, allowing us to watch as the humanoid creature puts this device over his beck like a neck brace.
The creature begins to speak … in English. “Yes. I was responsible for the destruction of the craft you speak of.”
At first, I’m not sure what I just heard. Was he admitting to understanding my question, or was he admitting to a crime that led us down a five-year path of blood and fire with an innocent race? I wonder if the device, which now appears to me to be a translator, may be faulty.
“You look surprised?” the creature says, blinking several times in a minute.
“Did you just admit to destroying our ship?” I ask. I am not about to start another war over some faulty translator.
“Yes, I destroyed the ship,” it says again.
Anger begins to build inside me. “Do you understand the ramifications of that?”
“I understand. Very well,” it replies.
“State the reason or reasons for which you harmed an innocent starship,” I demand, allowing my anger to modulate my voice. “And your reasons better be good.”
“Innocent?” the creature says. “You call them innocent? They were not innocent. They transgressed our laws and paid the ultimate process with their life.” The creature then emits a series of hacking laughter that carries the weight of an ominous tone.
“What laws?” I say, trying to catch up to his (if he is, in fact, a he) reasoning. “The Terran Union or the Terran Armada wasn’t informed of any wrong doing by its ship or captain. Neither were we invited to any criminal proceeding that ended in a death penalty. As such you had no right to execute them.”
I’m having a hard time keeping my anger under control. I know it. But this has been a long time coming. All I want to do is send a barrage of torpedoes and lasers in the ship’s direction. I may not be able to destroy it, sure; but I can at least damage it, which will provide me with some level of satisfaction.
Before the alien begins replying, I glance at the communication’s officer and mutter to her, “I hope this is being recorded?”
She gives me a slight nod and I return my focus to the creature.
“We have no laws but the laws we make for ourselves,” it says. “Your ship was found desecrating this nebula. For that crime she was destroyed.”
A question quickly pops into my mind: how does one desecrate a nebula? I don’t ask that question right away, though. I wait for a while, processing what the creature’s telling me and deciding on my best course of action.
The Mariner is gone. Starting a war with these people isn’t going to bring them back. Perhaps, the five year war of attrition we have waged against the Sonali have effectively bled us dry. We can’t afford another costly war with something as powerful as what I see before me. I have to proceed with caution.
This isn’t the time for torpedoes, but for diplomacy.
“We assure you, the Mariner wasn’t sent to this nebula to desecrate it. The Mariner possessed limited offensive capability, except the ones necessary to weather an asteroid belt or to destroy an obstacle in its path. The Mariner could never have posed a threat to you. I tell you, you’ve wrongfully executed judgment and killed innocent people.”
“You misunderstand me, Captain,” the creature replies. “They desecrated our nebula by trying to probe. You see many, many millennia ago our home world was destroyed by an alien race – much more advanced than us. To survive, we migrated from that world to space. We moved from system to systems in search of a suitable home until we came to this nebula. We have grown and thrived in the relative peace and silence of this nebula, and we have laid our claim to it.
“Your science vessel broke that silence by invading our territory. They were trying to learn about us. For this they were destroyed.”
“So you destroyed our people because they were trying to learn about this nebula and about you?” I ask. I want to be sure we hear everything clearly and not morphed by anecdotes or emotion.
“Indeed,” the creature replies. “We wanted to protect our privacy. To guard against those who would see us destroyed again. This is my job as viceroy, to ensure the continued survival of my species. The only way I can achieve this is by keeping our existence a secret. I could not let your ship leave this place with the knowledge of our existence. So I had to destroy it.”
I frown. I am uncomfortable with the moral compass on this creature. How can they dole out wanton destruction on a harmless ship without scruples?
>
“If I heard you correctly, you said you migrated to space?” I say. “What did you mean by that? Did you build space stations?”
“No,” it replies. “We built big space ships.”
“So you live on these space ships?” I ask.
“Yes,” it says. “There are only five of these ships remaining. They are enough for us for now.”
“If you have ships, why couldn’t you people move to another nebula?” I probe further. “Why destroy our ship?”
“Because we have lived here for so long we are unwilling to move again,” it replies. “Sometimes we set up on asteroids and use our ships to keep the asteroids in place … this place. But ultimately we live in our ships and this is where our ships belong. This place is now our heritage.”
I am about to ask another question, when it says, “And this brings me to what I really have to say. I will do whatever it takes to protect my people. I encountered a Captain Davan of the Mariner. I took the form of a Sonali using the same technology that allowed me to pose as your vessel. I spoke of peace and trade. And then I destroyed them. I hope you will understand the reason why I must destroy you also. You have found us. You know our secret. I cannot allow you to possess this knowledge and go away from you. It pains me, deeply, but I must destroy you as well. Your ship,, and your entire crew have to die.”
“You can’t…”
The creature vanishes from the screen.
“Captain, the signal has been terminated.”
“Get him back!” I yell, pounding my fist into my chair. My heart is racing and jerking in all directions.
I have just led my people into a death trap.
“Captain, they are not responding to our hails,” the communications officer says.
“Captain,” this comes from the tactical officer, “I am picking up a building surge of emerging in specific areas of the ship. This energy signature is akin to the one Dr. Lannigan defines as destructive and with the same exact electromagnetic signature found on The Mariner debris. Captain … I think they are charging their weapons.”
“Evasive maneuvers!” I yell for the second time.
