by Tony Healey
Clayton’s eyes fixed on her own for a moment. “It’s not public knowledge, and I’m not even sure I should be telling you this…”
“Go on,” she urged him.
Clayton sat forward, his voice lowered to a near whisper. “As you know, I have contacts here and there. It’s one of the reasons I was able to get hold of your new meds. Call it a kind of black market, but not quite. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, years ago I got talking to a contact of mine. Said he’d seen some things. Stumbled upon a Union facility on a backwater planet.”
“Which planet?”
Clayton shook his head. “He didn’t say. Only that it was one of those frontier jobs. You know, far away from everything. They live practically a wild west existence in those places.”
“So what did he see?”
Clayton’s eyes were heavy. “Jess, he told me he saw an army of Union soldiers on manoeuvres. But they weren’t human and they weren’t replicants. He said they were… something else. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it sounded an awful lot like what I’ve just cut open on that table. The traits he described to me would fall in line with something containing organic and mechanical body parts.”
Jessica let that sink in. “I wonder if that’s why we’ve really been sent here.”
“What do you mean?” Clayton asked.
“It’s probably nothing. Just a line of thought. Anyway, what traits do you mean? What did he tell you?” Jessica asked him, putting what she’d been thinking about to the back of her mind for now.
“He said he observed one of them leap over twenty metres into the air, then fire at a series of ground based targets before he landed,” Clayton told her. “Another got shot by live rounds, in the chest, and yet continued to fight on. Understandably, as soon as he could, my contact fled the area and forgot about what he’d seen. That is, of course, till he’d had a drink.”
“And you don’t think it was the drink talking?” she asked the Doctor, although she knew in her heart it wasn’t. Again, there was something nagging at the back of her mind.
Clayton shook his head once. “No. He saw it.”
“I won’t repeat this, Doctor,” Jessica assured him. She stood. Clayton looked up at her.
“Jess, what are we doing developing soldiers like that? I thought the Union’s days of warmongering were over.”
“I did too,” she said, and left. On her way out, she spared the scorpion one last look as it was pushed into a heavy bag for freezing. Then she left the medical bay behind and headed for the bridge.
* * *
On her way up there, Jessica thought about the circumstances under which they’d been sent to investigate the Enigma. Grimshaw had been in such a hurry to get the Defiant shipshape and ready to go. They barely had time to catch their breath after a full year in the galactic wilds before they were sent straight back out on a secret mission.
She detoured to her quarters and called up the file on the Enigma. She accessed the data from the probe that had first detected its presence. Her suspicions proved correct. Command had had possession of the data for six months. Meaning, they’d known the Enigma was out there all that time. And yet, they’d made no effort to make a rendezvous with it.
Why?
And there was something else, too. It nagged at her. She couldn’t remember exactly what it was, so she scanned through reports from the time the Enigma had been sighted. Her eyes widened as she happened across the very thing she’d been trying to remember. And then, on from that, aerial footage of a planet’s surface.
She had a theory. But she needed a sounding board. Jessica called up to the bridge and requested Commander Greene come to her quarters immediately. Not long after, he was at her door.
“Emergency?” he asked, visibly a little out of breath from his sprint.
“Sorry, Del, I didn’t mean to startle you. No, not an emergency. Something important, though. Sit down,” she said. “Water? I’m having one.”
“Good. Let’s drink water together then,” he said and sat. “So what is this?”
Jessica poured each of them a glass of water, handed Greene his, and went through the whole thing. She told him about Clayton’s story – and swore him to secrecy – then explained to him about the telemetry from the deep space probe Command had been holding onto for six months.
“So why the rush?” Greene asked.
“This is what I’m coming to. And it’s only a theory, I just want to know if it’s nuts or not,” King said.
“Go on . . .”
She licked her lips. “Just suppose the Union has been working on resurrecting old Namar technology from all that time ago. God knows they were ahead of the curve in most respects. What if they’ve found a way of reverse engineering it, but it’s not perfect?”
“Yeah. I read there’s lots of that old Namarian stuff about, and maybe they found relics from that time we’ve not heard about,” Greene said.
“So, something happens. Such as three months ago. An experimental starship is stolen from Starbase 19 and simply disappears. They’ve yet to track it down.”
“Okay.”
“The report indicated an inside job. Union people stole that ship, Del. And I’ve a feeling just what sort of Union people did it, too,” she said, nearing her point.
Greene was already there. “The soldiers Clayton told you about.”
“Precisely.”
Jessica led him to her work station and produced the aerial footage of a backwater planet that had long been dubbed Delta Colony. It showed a scorched area on the surface, and what had once been a barracks. “Apparently this is all that remains of a training facility.”
“Training facility? Yeah right. Top secret source of operations more like,” Greene said. “So you think . . . what? The soldiers went AWOL and blew the place apart in the process?”
Jessica looked up at him, nodding slowly. “Exactly that. It seems to make sense, doesn’t it? Especially given their sudden interest in the Enigma.”
“When did this happen?”
“A little over three months ago, followed almost simultaneously by the theft of the ship. And then, lo and behold, along we come,” she said. “The right ship, in the right place, at the right time.”
Commander Greene walked to the porthole, folded his arms, and looked out.
“It doesn’t quite add up though,” he said. “Why wait so long? Why not reroute a ship straight there the minute they found it?”
“I don’t understand that either,” King said. “But whatever the reason, they must have one.”
Greene looked at her from across the room. “You understand we can’t talk about this to anyone, right? It has to stay between us. At least, for now.”
“I know, Del. You’re the only one I trust,” Captain King said. She drained her water. She set the glass back on the table. “I believe we’re being played here, somehow. And when we find out just how, I intend to be ready to take action.”
“Amen,” Greene said.
50.
At the exact same time Captain Jessica King was in her quarters discussing conspiracy theories with Commander Greene, Team Three discovered an airlock within the power facility at the rear of the Enigma. It took a bit of work for Lieutenant Jackson to open it. The airlock was not a fancy, touch-operated mechanism as they’d seen elsewhere on the ship. It had a traditional locking wheel, stiff with age. It took all of the man’s strength to get it to budge.
However, budge it did.
“We’ll let the man go first,” Rayne said.
“Don’t I count?” Belcher asked. He’d been standing next to Jackson as he struggled with the locking wheel, but the other man had refused any offer of help.
“Oh yes, you do,” Rayne said. “But Jackson’s the one with the biggest weapon. And the most experience in hand-to-hand combat. If there’s something or somebody down there, they’ll meet their match.”
Belcher went next. “I’m pretty handy with a wrench myself, I’ll have you know
. . .”
Selena Walker rolled her eyes and went in after Belcher, with Olivia Rayne stepping through the airlock last.
Sulphur yellow light filtered through from the ceiling. There were dim runner lights on the floor, but they did little to cut through the gloom in there. However, it was easy to see what this section of the ship was.
Rayne hit her comm. and got in touch with the Defiant straight away.
* * *
“Captain?” the bridge called through the comm. unit in her room. Jessica stopped Commander Greene on his way out the door.
“Hold on Del, let’s hear this first,” she said. “Bridge, this is the Captain. What is it?”
“We have Team Three on the line. It’s urgent.”
“Put her through,” Jessica said. Greene stepped away from the door and it closed.
“Captain, it’s Rayne,” a familiar voice said over the speakers.
“Lieutenant, I hear you, go ahead,” Jessica answered.
“We found something back here, something you’ll want to see,” Rayne said.
Greene frowned.
“Olivia, what have you found down there?” King asked her.
There was a brief silence, and then: “People. We’ve found people . . .”
51.
Captain’s Personal Journal
T.U. Defiant Log
Standard Ship Time
We have found a crew. This is unexpected but not unbelievable. By that I mean it is has not shocked me. We knew going in that anything might happen. We didn’t know what we’d find inside the Enigma. However, I’m unsure how to proceed. Do I wake one of them? Ask questions?
Is it unethical? Does it breach any of our rules and regulations? I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered a Directive that dealt with this kind of situation . . . but I could be mistaken. We’re looking into it now.
In the meantime, I’ve asked Doctor Clayton to meet me at the airlock to C-1. I’ll then escort him through the Enigma. I’m hopeful he can do an examination and shed some light on the situation with the crew. Are they in some state of hibernation? We believe so.
Olivia noted that there were several of the pods vacated. Empty, the doors left wide open like clamshells. Almost as if some of them had woken up and climbed out. Or, perhaps they have been pried open like oysters, the pearls within stolen away . . .
52.
As they rode the tram from C-1 to C-3, just the two of them, Dr. Clayton asked the Captain how she was finding the new medication.
“Oh, apart from an occasional bout of sea sickness, I’ve been fine. No problems.”
Clayton frowned. “Sea sickness?”
“You know, wobbly legs, a little bit of nausea. Whatever’s in the medicine seems to set me off balance for a couple of hours. But it soon settles down and the effects wear off. I’m not too bothered by it, Doctor,” Jessica assured him.
“Well, keep an eye on it anyway. We don’t want reactions to the medicine to make you feel worse rather than better. The whole idea was to give you some respite from the pain and discomfort, after all.”
“Yes I know. And it’s working fine right now.”
Clayton seemed to accept that. He stared out the window as the shuttle took them from one end of the cylinder to another, speeding past a lot of the stuff they’d spent hours cataloguing for future analysis. They’d taken every reading they could take. Now that she’d been in there a while, Jessica felt entirely at ease with an upside down world constantly over her head.
However, for the Doctor, it was all too much.
“Mustn’t look up,” he mumbled.
“Huh?” she asked him.
Clayton flicked his eyes to the topsy-turvy landscape above them, then he looked back down again. “I don’t do well with heights.”
“But Doctor! We’re at ground level –”
“Doesn’t matter. Looking at what’s up there makes me feel like I’m high above it all, and everything’s in miniature. I feel wrong. So it’s best to just keep averting my eyes and move onto something else. I’ve never been good with heights.”
“I think you manage just fine. Right, well, very good then,” King said. “I don’t think we’re far from it all now.”
“Excellent,” Clayton said.
“It was a stroke of luck, finding these. Otherwise it might have taken days to explore the interior. I’m not sure anyone wants to spend that long in a cylinder, no matter how big it is. You never quite forget you’re a small bug in an oversized jar.”
Clayton crossed his arms. “So . . . these stasis pods they’ve found…”
“Apparently there are too many to count. Until we can access their computer system, and somehow decipher the information there, we’ll have to guess at the number,” Jessica said.
“Right. And are they humanoid?”
“So they tell me. I don’t think they can see much. I told them not to pop any of the pods open until you arrive,” she told him.
“Good decision,” Clayton said. “I did read that the Namar dabbled in cybernetics and biomechanical technology. I’d imagine we’ll see the same kind of organism as the scorpion I dissected.”
“You mean, a mixture of the two.”
“Yes. Of course, it’ll be fascinating to observe a live specimen. See how all the organs operate,” Clayton said. He slowly looked up as the tram raced across the last of C-2 and entered the tunnel leading to C-3. “Ah. That’s better. Thank goodness I’m not claustrophobic, too…”
53.
The room was filled with stasis pods. Jessica’s gaze fell immediately to the empty pods a few feet away, left open as if they were coffins raided by grave robbers. She didn’t call attention to them. Not yet.
“My oh my,” Dr. Clayton said as he examined one of the occupied pods. There was a sheet of glass, frosted with ice, through with he could see the face of the sleeper within. “A harsh form of hibernation.”
“What do you mean?” Jessica asked him.
Clayton looked up. “Well, when we put someone into hibernation, we generally lower the temperature of the pod as a matter of course. However, to actually reduce the temperature to near freezing does irreparable damage to the cell structure, the internal organs . . . the list goes on.”
“But not in one of the Namar, I take it,” Jessica offered.
“Yes.”
“Do you think we can pop one open?” she asked him.
Selena Walker shot her a look. “Sorry, Captain, but are you sure that’s such a good idea? I mean, is it ethical?”
“You’ve every right to question my judgement on this, Miss Walker. But don’t worry. I’ve checked every directive, every rule. As long as we have probable cause, we’re well within our rights to wake one of them to get answers,” the Captain explained. “And that little stockpile back there is just that. Probable cause.”
“I agree,” Walker said.
The Doctor looked over several of the pods. He jabbed a finger at one of them. “This pod seems to be on a different sequence than the others. Like it’s been programmed to wake the inhabitant following a specific trigger.”
Jessica called Belcher over, and watched as the junior engineer examined the displays on the front of the pod. Despite being in a different language, he seemed to be able to understand some of it.
Perhaps, Jessica mused, some things, like mathematics, are a universal language.
“Far as I can tell,” Belcher said. “It’s definitely on some kind of count down. A kind of defrost. Only way I can describe it.”
“Can we move the pod?” Jessica asked.
Belcher gave it a look. “I think so. These things have an independent power source. You know, so that if anything happens to the ship itself, they continue to operate. If I get a couple of hands over here, I’m certain I can have it out and on its way over to the Defiant within an hour.”
She turned to Dr. Clayton. “Will you stay nearby, in case he needs you?”
“Sure,” Clayton said.
Jessica looked around. The dingy light down there beneath the engine structure, the way it cut through the grating and made bars of the shadows almost resembled a prison.
“Make it happen,” she told Belcher. “Get the Chief to personally pick who she’s sending over here. I’m sure Jackson can assist while you wait.”
“Yes Ma’am,” Gary Belcher said. “Don’t worry. We’ll do it.”
54.
As it happened, removing the stasis pod from C-3 proved easier than first thought. Apart from the sheer weight of the pod itself, it proved to be completely independent from the surrounding mechanics. As Belcher had noted, it operated separately from the rest of the Enigma.
“It’s a kind of redundancy,” he said as he helped Lieutenant Jackson lift it off of the mounts that held it in place. “If the hull got compromised, the man or woman inside would be untouched.”
Olivia Rayne guided them out the door, but then they had to lower the pod back to the ground.
“Thank God they’re bringing over an anti-grav platform . . .” Belcher sighed, beads of sweat on his face.
“I know what you mean,” Jackson said. “They make ‘em solid, don’t they?”
“Well –” Belcher started to say. Jackson held up a hand to stop him in his tracks.
“A redundancy. I know. I got it,” he said.
“Sorry,” Belcher said. He sat down.
“Come on Selena, let’s give the boys a hand,” Rayne said.
Walker took one end and Olivia the other. They both lifted. Belcher and Jackson watched with mouths agape as the two girls carried the pod slowly down to the surface of C-3, toward the tram.
They scrambled after them. “Wait! Wait! We’ll take over!”
* * *
A half hour later, two men from the Defiant had relieved Team Three of their heavy burden and whisked the pod away on an anti-grav platform. Olivia Rayne turned to Jackson and Belcher. “Shall we set up monitors on the other pods? So we know if any of the others start to defrost?”
