Harbinger

by Stephen Christiansen

  But besides the vibrations, there was something else as well. A wave of nausea, dizziness and lightheadedness was sweeping over what was left of the crew. Space was starting to be warped and twisted by the singularity drive and it was having a negative effect on everyone’s inner ear balance. This was a typical side effect and those who were awake during the jump to warp speed usually had the displeasure of experiencing it. It took some time to get used to, even for veteran space travelers. Most travelers were already in cryo sleep by the time the warp engine kicked on and never had to experience this effect. Now, however, everyone was impacted.

  Everything seemed to be going well and there was a sense of hope that suppressed the nausea and filled the hearts and spirits of everyone there. They were going to make it. That was until…

  Electrical shortages ran across the consoles and laptops. Circuits were shorted. A few of the laptops were fried. A couple of the monitors exploded and sent shards of glass in all directions. Smoke started to fill the room.

  “Cough...cough...what in the world was that?”

  “Why…?”

  “What happened?”

  The questions were coming too fast for Bruce to answer one by one. He brushed the thin layer of smoke away so that he could get a better look at the situation. His eyes scanned over the equipment as he looked for an answer. Several of the systems were fried and a couple more had their LEDs drop down to a single bar. This was not good.

  “Our navigation system went down. Long range and short range radar has gone down. We’re flying blind. We’ve been hit with a jamming device, something that only took out our navigation systems but left everything else powered on.”

  Bruce went through the process of shutting both the singularity engine and their main engine offline. His fingers hit the singularity engine and pulled the LED lights down to the last bar position. Afterwards, he followed suit with the main engine. There was a slight, diminishing sound across the ship that signaled the power drain. The nausea, dizziness and lightheadedness came to an end. The vibrations came to a stop as the engines came to a stop. The ship wasn’t going to stop, at least not yet. They were still going to drift in the same direction that they were going through their momentum. There was still a clear path for them to continue their course, at least for now, but Bruce would have activated the maneuvering thrusters to bring them to a stop if they had them available.

  “What the hell are you doing? Get us out of here!” Cleo started throwing out commands.

  “Sorry, can’t do that. I’m preventing us from flying into a nearby planet or smashing into an asteroid. We’re not going anywhere without navigations or radar. The singularity drive won’t even function without coordinates. Although I’ve punched in those coordinates, the computer for the singularity drive would need to talk to the navigations system and since that is no longer going to happen any time soon, the singularity drive would shut itself down. Since we’ve already had an improper shutdown that has brought us to our current predicament, I’ve shut everything off until we can get this fixed. There’s nothing we can do until we’re back online.”

  “Short circuits?”

  “Surge of power?”

  “Can you fix it?”

  Again the questions continued to come at Bruce faster than he could answer them. “No, no nothing wrong on our end.”

  “Then what caused…?”

  “Dagons,” Vincent answered.

  Chapter: 20

  “Xenoamorphopseudopods,” Doctor Cleo Swanson corrected.

  “Zee-no-morf-whats-a-pods?”

  “Xenoamorphopseudopod,” Cleo corrected again. “It means an alien life form with a changing shape and many feet. Although we don’t know what they call themselves, we have given them a scientific name of Xenoamorphopseudopods. They are more commonly known as Dagons, although N.A.S.A. hasn’t officially used this title…”

  “You mean space squids,” Vincent said with disgust.

  “We don’t use the term space squids and we barely use the term Dagons.”

  “Why? Is it because it might be offensive to Earth squids? And why not use Dagons.”

  “The original known recordings come from an Old Testament biblical account. This was the name that the Philistines had used for one of their gods. It was believed to have an image of a half man and half fish. Later, this deity was reborn in the works of a well known fictional writer. Neither have scientific or established bases on reality. Unfortunately both meanings stuck once we meet the creatures. Cults have actually sprung up to worship them. Can you believe that there is merchandise dedicated to these creatures?”

  “Despite the cult worshiping, these creatures are not a welcome to our society. They are a threat to our very existence. They kill everyone that they can get their tentacles on. They are deadly, relentless, bloodthirsty creatures. They cannot be reasoned with.”

  “And yes, they do resemble octopi and squid. From what we can tell, there are two different versions of them. The octopi version seems to be more common while the squid version seem to be leaders. Although this is all speculation since not many people have lived through one of their raids and none of these creatures have been captured alive.”

  “Like Earth octopi and squid, these creatures are aquatic in nature. However, they seemed to have been able to adapt to traveling on land as well, as long as the atmosphere is very humid. They have also thought to be very prolific and highly adaptive. Heaven help us all if they ever land in the Earth’s oceans.”

  “We are on the outskirts of the known Dagon territory,” Vincent added. “We were supposed to circumnavigate around this area, but once our warp drive was lost and reversed its gravitational well, we drifted too close to the very area that we were trying to avoid.”

  “I’ve seen and heard of these tactics before by the Dagons,” Vincent continued. “They shut down a ship’s navigations to keep it from running and then board it. They’ll do everything they can to keep the ship intact while killing off the crew in a very brutal and ugly fashion. A Dagon raiding party can be very devastating.”

  “What can we do?” Cleo asked with extreme fear in her voice.

  “Arm ourselves and hope for the best. With any luck these are only recon scout ships and there will be a limited amount of them.”

  “How limited?” Richard asked.

  “Perhaps a dozen, perhaps twenty, per ship.”

  “But there were three blips on the radar. You are telling me that we are facing somewhere among thirty six to sixty of these space squids? We’re outnumbered. We’re drifting through space. What are we going to do?” Tracy had asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.

  Tracy was in near hysterics again. Vincent wished someone would just slap her; they had no time to comfort someone that was going to break down every time that they were in danger. He would do it himself, but he needed the trust of everyone around him and he was sure that he would break that if he took care of Tracy the way he wanted to. However, his patience was running thin and anger was starting to build, he did not have time for this.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Vincent said as he got into her face. His voice had increased and his anger was barely kept in check between clenched teeth. “Now that we have the power back on and flowing through the different systems, we now have the lasers back online. We can use them against the incoming ships. With any luck we can take out at least a couple of them, all of them if we can. If we can’t then we arm ourselves and prepare for a boarding party.”

  “They will not take prisoners,” Vincent continued. “So, if you are going to fight, fight as if your lives and ours will depend on it, because it will. If you’re not going to fight, then find some place to lock yourself in and hope that the rest of us can take care of it.”

  “In case you haven’t realized, we aren’t fighters,” Doctor Richard Atkins said. “And besides, we don’t have anything to arm ourselves with.”

  Vincent patted the side arm in his holster on h
is right thigh. “I’m almost always armed. It’s a Cerberus mock III. I’ll take out as many as I can.”

  “I own a Cerberus mock I,” Eric stated adding to the conversation. “It’s back with the rest of my gear in the landing shuttle. I’ll go get it.”

  Vincent made a scoff at the sound of the inferior weapon. His initial impression of the scientists’ field security was only made to be more accurate. Eric was more of a “rent-a-cop” or perhaps a “soldier for hire.” He was a want-a-be, nothing more.

  “I’ve got a couple of sonic blasters back in the land rover,” Bruce added.

  All eyes were shifted toward Bruce. Sonic blasters were initially used as non-lethal weapons by riot officers. Unfortunately when they were turned up to their higher settings, they had a habit of shattering bones and doing a considerable amount of damage, far more than what had been expected. Their initial use had left five dead and several severely wounded and hospitalized due to repeated blasts. Due to their lethal capacity after repeated uses, these were banned, not only as non-lethal weapons by many politicians and public outcry and demand but also as military weapons by the United Nations.

  However, after some modifications, the sonic blasters were designed for mining purposes. The sound waves were able to cut through stone with less risk than explosives and after some fine tuning they were able to produce various sound waves that would cut through specific rock leaving harder material behind. Material could be cut from mines faster, easier, safer, and with more precision.

  Although the sonic blasters had been modified for safer use, they had also become more deadly. At the right setting, bones could be shattered to powder. They could be a very dangerous and effective weapon, even if it was no longer legal to use them as such.

  Vincent nodded. “Fetch them; we’ll need everything we can get. Now, does anyone have any experience firing a laser?”

  “I do,” Eric stated. “I’ve had some experience in basic training.”

  Vincent rolled his eyes. Again he couldn’t believe the situation that he was in and the fact that all he had to deal with was a few scientists and this mercenary for hire with only basic training. But basic training was better than none.

  “Fine, Bruce, I need you to fetch Eric’s weapon while you are getting the sonic blasters and bring them back as quickly as you can. Eric, I’ll show you one of the lasers that are still operational and accessible, I’ll take the other. The rest of you, stay here and lock yourselves in until we come back.”

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  Vincent pointed toward one of the halls of the ship.

  “Follow that hall down until it ends then take a right. You’ll find the room for the controls of the laser for that section of the ship. I hope your training has paid off, we’re going to need it.”

  He still couldn’t believe that he was putting his life in the hands of someone that only had some basic training, and he couldn’t even tell how much of that training was drilled into him. If he had been the drill instructor then he would know the quality and quantity of the training and he would have a better idea of how far he would be able to trust this man’s skills and abilities.

  Eric gave a loud sigh as he turned down the hall. If he had been reading the signals from Vincent, he was opt to believe that the ship’s security officer was upset or angry with him. He had already come to the conclusion that the two of them probably wouldn’t ever see eye to eye. Vincent was a veteran while he had nowhere near Vincent’s experience. On top of this, this was Vincent’s ship, his responsibility, and Eric knew that he was intruding. However, he still didn’t appreciate being scoffed at when every given opportunity presented itself.

  Eric continued down the hall as best as he could while avoiding the debris that had fallen. A couple of shorting sparks had caught his attention, but otherwise he was focused on getting to the laser station as quickly as he could. He took the turn as Vincent had indicated and followed the hall a short distance until he found the room on his right.

  The room was no bigger than a closet. It offered a seat that allowed him to sit in front of a control panel. There was small joystick to the right of the terminal. Everything was dark and black.

  Eric felt disappointed, especially after the seeing the controls for the railgun and the gun itself. This was such a tiny room compared to the other one and the contraption that Helena was able to sit in was far greater than this one. But he had to consider the weapons. The railgun probably had a loading mechanism to bring up its payload from some storage facility underneath it on top of needing a long barrel cannon to fire them. This would be added to the fact that it would need conduit feeds for the coolant system. The railgun needed more space to operate.

  The laser system that he was behind didn’t need all of that. It probably only needed a small generator nearby that was probably in the room next to him. Any coolant feeds that it would need would go directly into that room and the laser gun itself didn’t need to be that big. All in all, he was just going to tell the computer to point and shot for him. It would take more energy and computer controls than the railgun which was why they couldn’t use this before. Now that they had the energy to power the laser, this was more efficient than the railgun, although not as impressive. The railgun would toss a large projectile at incredible speeds that would slam into its target and make an impressive hole. This laser would also make a hole, but wouldn’t be as large. However, it would be more precise. He could be able to target any portion of any incoming ship and keep the laser on it until the laser cut through. With the computer targeting system, the incoming ships would not be able to dodge the laser that was coming at them at light speed and wouldn’t be able to maneuver away from a computer locked system that followed their every move. Still it would have been nice to sit in the big chair and fire the big weapon.

  With that thought, Eric’s mind went to Helena. Her death had been such a tragedy and he knew that it would weigh heavy on his heart, probably for the rest of his life. But he had to shake off those feelings. He knew that he now had the same job that she only recently had, even if the control room was smaller. He also knew that he had to have the same resolve as she did if they were going to survive or else not only would they share her fate, her death would be in vain.

  With this in mind, Eric found the “on” switch to the control panel and gave it a flick. The sound of power seemed to hum somewhere behind him. Meanwhile the control panel came to life. The white screen and the light green letters cast an eerie glow over the room.

  The screen only flickered twice before it started to show the warm up procedure. The letters slowly spelled out the process as it occurred.

  “Main power...online.”

  “Tracking...online.”

  “Remote connections...online.”

  Once the words had been spelled out, they had gone away and were replaced with a three dimensional green grid. There distance, speed, trajectory, and coordinates to everything in the area was picked up. However, from what Eric could tell, what was picked up wasn’t much. He could only see the area that was in his general vicinity. If all of the laser weapons were accessible and were able to have power flowing through them, he was sure that this would act as a very effective defense. Now, there was only small fragments of the ship that could be covered between him and Vincent.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Vincent made his way through the ship without thought of anything else. His mind was focused on the task at hand. Either he would succeed or they would die. Not even the debris of fallen pieces of the ship or the various sidetracking that he had to do to ensure that he could get to where he was going had slowed him down.

  It didn't’ take long to find the laser control room that he was looking for. With a quick flick of the switch and with a few commands through the computer, he was ready for the task at hand. He knew the area that th
is laser would protect and from the way the three ships were coming, he was sure that he would be able to get an opportunity to take out at least one of them.

  As the three dots, representing the three incoming ships, came onto the radar screen, Vincent began to understand that this was far more than just a few scouting ships. They came in with an attack formation. There was a lead ship with the other two flying on each side and slightly back. This would be a common attack formation that planes would use during an aerial attack, and although this was space and didn’t have the need to fly in such formation to redistribute wind and atmosphere, it was still a very tactical formation. If Vincent’s memory served him correctly, he had learned that ancient Romans used such tactics in their land formations. It would only be reasonable that a more advanced alien life would understand the importance of such a formation and use it in their military tactics. All of this meant that these three ships were a military attack strike force.