by Dan Worth
‘I think they’re both in for a nasty surprise.’
‘Well, they might not be the only ones.’
The armada emerged from its jump in perfect synchronisation. Centrepoint Station loomed large in Cox’s view from the bridge, its metal and composite structure gleaming whitely in the actinic star light against the blackness of space.
‘Helm, all stop. Disengage links to navigational computer,’ Cox ordered. ‘Mr Lee, order the lifters to move the alien ship into dry-dock. All other ships are to assume a defensive posture.’
The close formation of vessels began to break up, the large vessels peeling slowly away to face outwards from the station. As Cox watched, the two lifters and their precious cargo passed by on the port side of the Germanicus, heading for the blast doors of one of Centrepoint’s docking bays which even now began to slowly part to welcome it. Once inside, the ship would be tethered and held within the weightless environment of the dock and then the dock itself would then be flooded with atmosphere to allow human technicians and researchers inside.
The lifters approached, and carefully handed off their cargo to a swarm of yellow Termite class tugs that hauled it carefully inside, the heavy bay doors closing slowly behind them.
‘Ensign,’ said Cox. ‘Send a coded transmission to Command. Inform them that the vessel is secure.’
He reclined in his command chair, the knowledge of a successfully completed mission and his impending and undoubted reward filling him with excitement and pride.
Chapter 25
The ship watched the figures as they approached its underside with anticipation. It felt the loss of Captain Blake intensely. Created as a scouting/insurgency vessel it functioned best when bonded with the biological species it had been tasked with gathering intelligence upon. It and the man had been together for so long that he had felt like a part of it and the ship had spent the long years exploring the passageways of his mind. There had been so much to learn from his imperfect biological brain; in particular it had learned that humans were insatiably curious, selfish and avaricious creatures. These were flaws that could be exploited. It floated in the bay, a wounded thing. It was incomplete, but not for much longer. It hungered.
Reynaud stood under the belly of the beast. The black, spiny bulk of the alien ship swelled above him, blocking the light from the main lighting rigs within the docking bay. Capable of housing a single carrier-sized vessel during maintenance or refit, the docking bay had been sealed and filled with air, allowing men and equipment to move unhindered within the weightless environment. The vessel floated in the middle of the bay, held in place by a lattice-work of gantries and tethers that surrounded it like a flimsy cocoon. Technicians swarmed about the gantries, fixing scanning and recording equipment into place, their suit clad bodies like tiny ants amid the maze of braces and struts while others moved in the air around the vessel, piloting small lifters or manoeuvring on the attitude thrusters of heavy industrial suits.
The dock itself was guarded by a full detachment of marines, whilst Cox’s armada held formation around Centrepoint Station, forming an interlocking, layered defence with their powerful guns and squadrons of fighters.
Reynaud however would be the first to re-enter the vessel since the debacle on the surface of Rhyolite. He shook his head ruefully when he thought of Katherine’s reaction to what they had found inside the craft. Typical of a woman, he thought, so hysterical. They could have learned so much more if the captain of the Magellan had been allowed to survive. The things that that man must have seen: such wonders! Reynaud could scarcely wait to uncover them for himself. His name would remain in the history books for all time. His career would reach heights he had never dreamed of, whilst the books and recording rights of his discoveries would make him wealthy. He smiled to himself with barely disguised glee.
Looking upwards towards the right hand wall of the dock he saw Cox looking down at him from the windows of the broad gallery that formed the dock’s control room. Cox’s deep voice resounded in Reynaud’s earpiece.
‘Dr Reynaud, are you ready to proceed?’
‘Yes Admiral, I have all the equipment I need for my preliminary investigations,’ he replied, gesturing to the two technicians standing behind him with an equipment pallet loaded with instruments floating between them in the weightless environment.
‘Very well. Enter the vessel. Make sure you remain in contact with us once you’re inside. We don’t want anything untoward happening again.’
‘Of course, Admiral. Moving inside now.’
Reynaud activated the thruster belt about his waist and drifted slowly forward towards the gaping entrance at the base of the vessel, his booted feet sweeping inches above the decking. The two technicians activated their equipment pallet and clung to the side of the bulky device as it began to drift forward.
As he reached the lip of the entrance into the ship, Reynaud paused and touched down on the surface of the crystalline material beneath his feet. He placed a hand on what passed for the surface of the vessel, feeling the strange solid contact with what appeared to be empty space above the material. He pushed his hand more forcefully towards the surface, but with no success, save for a slight tingling sensation in his palm. The darkness of the ship’s interior beckoned.
Moving inwards, Reynaud unclipped a small torch from his belt and swept it over the black, angular walls. They glittered oddly in the refracted light from their hyper-dimensional surfaces. Behind him he heard the technicians swearing as they attempted to manoeuvre the bulky pallet into the restricted spaces of the entrance.
‘Doctor? How’s it going in there,’ said Cox, his voice buzzing in Reynaud’s ear.
‘Okay so far Admiral,’ Reynaud replied. ‘Everything appears as we left it. I’m approaching the Magellan’s airlock door now and it’s still sealed.’
He swept his torch beam over the gleaming metal of the door, its crude appearance contrasting sharply with the crystalline structure that it was embedded within. Since Katherine had euthanized what had remained of the ship’s captain, no-one had been inside the vessel. Cox had decreed that it was to remain off limits until it could be opened again in a secure environment where a proper examination could be carried out. The remains of the airlock door had been replaced with a temporary seal that had been welded to the outside of the lock by the crews on Rhyolite to maintain the integrity of the ship’s contents and prevent any other vandalism by persons authorised or otherwise.
Reynaud approached the first of the blocky, yellow locks and removed a key card from his pocket. He slid the card into a slot on the seal’s face and listened to the solid clicking sound as it released its grip. He did the same with the second lock, grabbed the door and pulled it open, then floated inside. The technicians followed, struggling with the equipment pallet and turning it diagonally on its side to fit through the small opening.
‘Admiral, this is Reynaud. We’re inside the ship. I’m heading up to the bridge. I think my first line of investigation is to examine the body of the ship’s captain.’
‘Very good doctor,’ Cox replied, his voice sounding scratchy due to the weak signal. ‘I can have some of our medical staff from the station come down there and assist you if you like. Perhaps they might be able to determine precisely what that ship did to him better than yourself, how it kept him alive for so long, how it integrated him into its systems.’
‘Yes, thank you Admiral. That would be a great help.’
‘I’ll have them sent down to you immediately, Cox out.’
Reynaud turned left from the airlock and headed forward, past the still winking lights of the ghost ship’s active systems, through the narrow connecting corridor that led to the bridge. The gentle whirring of the antique computer systems were the only sounds until the clang of the equipment pallet striking the edge of a bulkhead resounded down the corridor.
‘Everything alright?’ said Reynaud acidly, turning to face the two men, one of whom was retrieving a handheld spectroscope fr
om where it had fallen. Evidently they were having problems moving the pallet out of the airlock and around into the corridor.
‘Yes Doctor. We’re just finding it difficult to manoeuvre this bloody thing in such tight space,’ replied one of the technicians, a stocky, balding man in stained overalls. ‘Makes you wonder how people coped, being cooped up in a thing like this for months at a time.’
‘Years, actually,’ said the other one. ‘You never hear about these ships? Deep space exploration vessels from the early days. The crews spent most of their time in suspended animation, what with those early jump drives being so slow and all. I hear this one went as far as the core though. Quite an achievement even now. Listen Doctor, if you want to go on ahead, we’ll catch up with you once we’ve got this thing sorted out. Shout for us on the comm. if you need anything.’
‘Very well,’ Reynaud replied, nodding. ‘I’ll see you gentlemen on the bridge.’
He pressed on, arriving at the junction of ladders and corridors aft of the bridge, and then onwards to the bridge itself. He looked around the small chamber filled with gently whirring, winking consoles and immediately noticed something different. Captain Blake’s body was nowhere to be seen. The crystalline structure still could still be seen, protruding down through the roof of the bridge, but it had withered to small stump. The captain’s chair remained, the only sign of his passing an ancient, brown-stained patch of blood where he had once sat.
‘Admiral Cox this is Doctor Reynaud. I’ve reached the bridge. There’s no sign of the body. Are you sure that no-one else has entered the vessel?’
‘Absolutely. Have a look at the alien machinery: maybe the ship rejected and recycled Blake’s body once he was dead? We need to know how the hell that thing works. Human-machine integration on that level is unheard of. It could be useful to us.’
‘Yes of course. Reynaud out.’
He stood in front of the captain’s chair and peered upwards at the stump of glittering material. Patterns shifted within it like the rest of the material that the alien ship was constructed from. But instead of the gentle shifting patterns seen elsewhere, these writhed and thrashed like snakes.
He shifted his position to get a better look, and it was then that he discovered he couldn’t move. Looking down in sudden horror he realised that tendrils of the same material had grown up through the floor around his feet, gripping his boots in a vice-like grip. As he watched, they grew up his legs, turning him and forcing him down into the chair. Panicking he tried to activate his comm.
‘Admiral Cox, this is Reynaud. The ship it’s… it’s got hold of me.’
There was no signal. All transmissions were being blocked. Looking up he saw the stump of crystal begin to grow, black whip-like tendrils of matter extruded downwards with alarming speed, whilst the ones grasping at his feet had now reached his waist.
‘Oh god! Get me out of this thing!’ he cried. ‘Somebody please help me! Help me!’
Within seconds the two technicians had arrived on the bridge. Glancing in horror at Reynaud the stockier of the two began pulling at the rapidly growing tendrils with his hands, trying to free Reynaud. The other ran back and returned with a plasma torch.
Reynaud saw them die.
Black tendrils stabbed downwards, skewering the two men. They stood in the poses they had assumed at the moment of impalement, twitching involuntarily from the massive, sudden trauma as their blood gushed onto the ancient decking
The tendrils from the ceiling had now reached him. They fastened under his thrashing arms, lifting him up on a pillar of rapidly growing machinery as he screamed.
His thrashing arms were a nuisance, so the ship removed them. It only required his brain and the mechanisms to keep it alive. The tendrils edges grew razor sharp, then constricted suddenly, removing the unnecessary limbs and cauterising the stumps as Reynaud screamed in agony.
His legs were next. The machinery around them had tired of their twitching so it neatly removed them as Reynaud’s screaming, limbless torso was lifted clear of their remains. The legs themselves were vomited forth by the pile of machinery as it grew and reconfigured itself. Reynaud was lowered back down onto a series of newly grown plugs and jacks that would integrate themselves with his digestive system. The machines began to burrow into his lower torso like maggots, devouring his bowels and cradling his heart with their life support mechanisms.
His screaming head was enmeshed by the black web of tendrils. They held him firmly in precise position, then they plunged into his skull, burrowing into his eyes where they clustered around his optic nerve, plunged down his throat into his abdominal cavity, cutting off his screams as they filled his oesophagus. They crept into his ears and also directly through the needle thin holes that they burrowed into his skull. Filaments of machinery grew throughout what remained of his body, as his twitching subsided. He became one with the alien ship as it burrowed into his mind. Then it spoke to him.
Cox looked to his staff. Reynaud and the two technicians had suddenly vanished. They couldn’t detect their presence aboard the alien ship at all, and communications had suddenly failed.
‘Goddamn it. Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’ he snapped. ‘I left instructions that this was to be done by the book. We can’t have defective equipment at a time like this.’
‘Sir, system diagnostics report that our sensors and comms are working perfectly,’ said a flustered looking ensign.
‘Can you be sure of that?’
‘The Chief Engineer reports that Centrepoint Station is able to detect all docked ships and those in the vicinity except this one. It would appear that the ship has assumed some sort of black body posture.’
‘Shit. Send a squad of marines down to the ship and get those men out of there! I don’t like this one bit. That thing is supposed to be dormant! Reynaud gave me his assurances. Are we getting any readings whatsoever from the vessel?’
‘The gantry mounted scanners we have in place are reporting increased levels of electromagnetic activity and a fifteen percent increase in neutrino emissions.’
‘Jesus Christ, look at that!’
Cox heard the cry coming from one of the techs and turned to look out of the control room windows. Something was happening to the surface of the alien ship. Its normally dark surface was alive with shifting patterns.
Reynaud saw wonders.
He saw the galaxy laid out before him, a glittering island of a hundred billion suns. He saw the myriad of civilisations that clustered every spiral arm. He saw the Shapers’ legions of willing slaves spreading outwards along those shining pathways. He saw their might and their power. He saw countless billions from thousands of unknown alien races fighting and dying across thousands of systems as the Shapers crushed, absorbed and subjugated all before them.
It spoke to him then.
The Singularity spoke to him.
Reynaud’s mind was flayed apart in the firestorm of the machine-god’s thoughts. It showed him what it planned for the human race, how its power would consume this galaxy and then spread across the universe.
Reynaud writhed in terror and elation at the grandeur and horror of it all.
Humanity would be elevated.
Humanity would achieve godhood as part of this supreme empire.
Submission was required.
Greed and cowardice and fear consumed Reynaud.
He told the god everything it asked of him.
He joined with it gladly.
Cox watched in wonder as the ship’s surface shifted chameleon-like before him. Colour flashed across its surface, steadily brightening to an ice-like sheen. It was so beautiful, so elegant.
‘Admiral, sensors are detecting massive neutrino emissions from the ship. Oh my god… Sir, hyperspace sensors are detecting huge fluctuations in the local volume.’
The ship reached out across hyperspace to the vast engines that its kind had constructed at the heart of the galaxy. Its consciousness blazed like a beacon, allowing th
ose engines to get an exact fix on its position as they span up to full power and reached out across thousands of light years.
The ship brightened to a blinding blue-white glare. It came alive then, flexing its interlocking plates like a waking animal as it shook itself within its moorings.
‘Sir I think the ship is powering up for a jump. We need to evacuate the station or everyone inside is going to be killed by the backwash. Sir?’
Cox realised now. He realised his mistake.
Everything vanished.
Far out in the Kuiper belt, the Churchill moved lazily among the sparsely scattered chunks of rock and ice, barely visible in the darkness at such a distance from Hadar’s twin suns. Chen was trying to get some sleep in her quarters, but the questions raised by the events of the past few days occupied her mind. Cox’s lifting of the alien ship off the surface of Rhyolite had finally revealed what the sly old goat had been hiding down there. She had watched from the edge of the system as he had secured his prize relic at Centrepoint Station, but the question remained as to why the Hidden Hand had been so keen to destroy it, and whether the ship itself, whatever its origins, had been responsible for the mysterious deaths at the dig site. One way or another, she wanted to get a look at that thing before she reported back to Haines. Scans taken of the dig site during the encounter with the Hidden Hand had revealed a tapered, spiny craft of unknown design, although something about it made her skin crawl. The very form of the thing raised some primal fear at the back of her mind.
She was roused from her sleepless mental turmoil by the chiming of the ship’s comm. near the bed head. Rolling over she stretched out a hand and activated it.
