Starship For Rent, page 26
I tapped my comm badge. "Hey Tee, you done watching your movie?"
"What's up, Noah-san?" Tyler replied. "Don't tell me you need me to tuck you in.”
Alyssa snorted. "As if. Get down here to the hangar. We found something and could use your he-man muscles." She smirked over at me. “That is, if you can get off your dead end for five minutes.”
Tyler's eye roll was practically audible through the link. “When did you two sneak away without a chaperone? I’m on my way, Your Majesty."
By the time Tyler loped down the stairs from the elevator a couple of minutes later, I’d located a toolkit and retrieved a pair of pry bars. I waved him over impatiently.
“It’s about time! Help us move this deck plate.”
“I had literally two minutes left in the movie. You wanted me to miss the ending, didn’t you?”
“How many times have you seen it?”
“Not the point.” Tyler dropped down beside me, eying the object beneath the deck. “What is that?"
"No clue, but the deck plate won't budge without both of us. Take that side," I said, handing him one of the pry bars. We wedged bars under opposite edges of the damaged plate, throwing our combined strength into lifting up the unyielding metal. I gritted my teeth at the strain, glad when the plate finally lifted enough for Alyssa to wiggle her fingers underneath it.
"Almost there! Push harder! Ally, lift!”
Finally, the panel lifted free. I sprawled backward, pry bar slipping from numb fingers. Tyler whooped triumphantly. "Hah! Take that, you dastardly deck plate!”
We gathered on three sides of the open square, looking down at the object nestled among multi-colored wiring. Metal, pill-shaped and a little smaller than a football, the sight sent an immediate dread coursing through me, raising goosebumps and shivering my spine.
“Does anyone else think that looks like the pills the Warden made us swallow?” I asked.
“Sort of,” Tyler agreed. “But how would it have gotten down there?”
“Maybe the Prall put it there,” Alyssa suggested.
“When did they have the chance? It took us five minutes to lift the panel out of the way and it made a racket. I know those ogres are strong, but I think we would have heard something.”
“Maybe the Warden is responsible,” I said. “Maybe not. Whatever it is, whoever it belongs to, I could be wrong, but I don’t think Ben knows it’s here.”
“Should we bring it to him?” Ally asked.
“I don’t think we should touch it,” Tyler answered. “What if it’s a bomb set to explode when it’s moved or something.”
I tapped my badge, fighting to steady my nerves and my voice. Our benign distraction had become something potentially more serious. "Captain, do you have a minute? We found something in the hangar I think you’ll want to see."
CHAPTER 37
Ben rushed through the elevator door at the rear of the hangar and trotted down the stairs to the hangar deck, skirting the Hunter's massive form as he hurried toward us. Shaq rode his shoulder, bluish fur standing on end. Apparently, even the Jagger sensed the gravity of our discovery.
"What did you find?" Ben asked breathlessly as he dropped to his knees at the edge of the opening in the deck plating. His eyes widened as he took in the metallic ovoid nestled in the wiring below. “What the hell is that?”
"Obviously, we have no idea," Tyler said. "We just found it under the deck plate. We were kind of hoping you knew it was there.”
Ben shook his head. “No. I didn’t know it was there. Have you tried moving it?"
"Are you crazy?” Ally retorted. “What if it's a bomb or something?"
"Valid point." Ben's brow crinkled. ”It's definitely concerning to find tech like that embedded in the ship without knowing how it works, why it's there, how long it’s been there, or who left it.” He reached for his comm badge. "Matt, Meg, Leo, are you busy?”
"Not at the moment,” Matt responded immediately. Meg replied similarly a few seconds later. “Leo’s in the head reading his horoscope,” she responded. “What's up?"
Tyler chuckled. Ben didn’t break a smile. "The three of you meet me in the hangar ASAP. We've got a mystery on our hands."
A few minutes later, Matt slid down the ladder rail and strolled casually across the deck toward us, the last to arrive. As usual, nothing seemed to faze his perpetually calm attitude. Even the sight of our ominous discovery earned only a raised eyebrow and a low whistle.
"Any theories on the football of doom?" he asked.
“All the markings on it are in another alphabet, and I guess the Warden’s translator only works on spoken language. Our best guess is that it's some kind of transmitter." Ben rubbed his jaw contemplatively. “Noah thinks maybe the Warden planted it onboard, which would explain how he’s able to track us wherever we go. Only none of us can come up with a plausible idea how it could have gotten it down there without anyone noticing." His eyes shifted to the twins. "Meg? Leo?”
"Don't look at us,” Meg replied. “If we dropped something that big into the hangar wiring, we'd remember.”
“Is it safe to move?” Matt asked.
“Your guess is as good as ours,” Ben answered.
“It isn’t connected to anything,” Leo said. “I think as long as we lift it gently and without changing its orientation, we should be safe.”
“Should be?” Tyler said. “That doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“I mean, we’ve been pushing some pretty high-G maneuvers lately, even after the Warden’s visit,” Matt said. “If nothing’s holding that thing down, I bet it’s already been tossed like my lunch when Ben flies the ship.”
“What?” Ben grumbled. “Do you remember the first time we played Star Squadron?”
“Yeah, but I was a different person back then. Point is, all signs point to yes with regards to the football being safe to carry.”
“I concur,” Leo said.
“Okay,” Ben decided. “Matt, you’re the jock. It’s your ball.”
“Meg and Leo are the science geeks,” Matt deferred. “They should handle it.”
“I’ll get a cart,” Leo said. “That’ll keep it mostly stable while we transfer it to sick bay for analysis.” He came out of his crouch and ran back up the stairs to the elevator.
“These lines look familiar,” Matt said, leaning in to trace some of the alien writing with the tip of his finger. “I feel like I’ve seen them somewhere before.”
“They resemble sigils,” Ben agreed. “That may be why they look familiar to you. But they aren’t sigils.”
“Maybe,” Matt conceded.
Leo returned with the hover cart in no time, guiding it to a stop directly adjacent to the open deck plate. He had arranged some towels in the center, creating a secure nest for the alien egg. “Ready when you are, Boss.”
“You should all stand back,” Matt said, crouching over the object. “Just in case.”
“If that thing blows, we’re all dead anyway,” Ben replied. “There’s only a few inches of steel beneath those wires. That’s all that’s sitting between us and compressed space.”
“Are you trying to scare me more than I already am?” Alyssa asked.
“Sorry,” Ben replied. “Matt, do it.”
Matt nodded, dropping to a knee and leaning beneath the level of the decking. He gently wrapped both hands around the bottom of the object, interlocking his fingers to ensure his cradle remained tight. Scooping the ovoid like it might be as brittle as an actual bird’s egg, he quickly stood and transferred it to the cart, lowering it quickly onto the towels. The flex of his muscles, followed by the sinkage of the towels, indicated the heavy weight of the device.
“The object’s secure,” Leo announced, allowing all of us to breathe a sigh of relief. Not that any of us felt truly relieved. Not with a discovery of something hidden right under our noses, and who knew for how long it had been there.
An ominous silence settled over the group as we rode the elevator up to Deck Two, our strange cargo secure on the hover cart in the center of the cab. If not for the occasional thrum synchronizing with fluctuations in the onboard reactor, I wouldn’t have been surprised if another malfunction in the elevator sigils had somehow caused time to stop. I wasn’t the only one. Both Tyler and Alyssa looked equally inpatient during the short ride, eager to either be rid of, away from, or at the very least identify the football’s purpose.
“What do we have in sick bay to help us identify this thing?” Ben asked, looking to the twins for answers.
“We can modify the autodoc to run a deeper penetration scan,” Leo said.
“That’ll at least tell us what’s inside,” Meg added.
“Like explosives?” Tyler asked.
“Including explosives.”
“How long will the modifications take?” Ben questioned.
“A few minutes,” Leo said. “We just need to change a few of the system settings through the interface. Our autodocs are older models, the kind that were initially produced as quality control for robot manufacturing, software updated to handle organic machines.”
“That’s a chilling thought,” Ally said.
“That’s what we are though, right?” Meg said. “At least, once you take out the soul. Organic machines. We all function the same.” She glanced at Ben. “Well, most of us.”
I didn’t know if she was referring to his ability to channel chaos energy or his brain tumor. Or maybe both. He was both supernatural and malfunctioning at the same time.
Reaching sick bay, Leo guided the cart into the first room, the same one Ben had scanned me in. Matt transferred the football onto the examination chair, careful to keep its position stable, while Meg tapped on the interface, cycling through menus long memorized. We waited with bated breath until she clicked her tongue in satisfaction, again glancing toward Ben. “We should be all set, Captain.”
“Run the scan,” he replied.
She initiated the autodoc. Multiple appendages shifted from overhead, red and green lasers sweeping over the seat and down to the object. The tools slowed once they made contact, taking their time examining the outer shell while invisible wavelengths pushed deeper into the metal. Multiple windows cluttered with metrics I couldn't decipher overlaid one another on the autodoc’s display. Meg’s sharp intake of breath hinted at her ability to understand the datastream.
"Figured it out already?" Ally leaned closer, head cocked.
"These readings suggest a self-contained cryostasis system," Meg explained.
"Cryo...you mean whatever's in there is alive?" I eyed the container uneasily. “Alien lifeforms haven’t worked out very well for us so far.”
“Assuming these readings are accurate.”
“Cryostasis requires incredibly precise calibration,” Leo protested. “Even minor disruption risks permanent systems failure and biological termination. All the jostling this egg must have been through during our run-in with the Achai probably killed whatever’s inside.”
“Normally I would agree,” Meg admitted. “But look at this.” She pointed to data that might as well have been a smiley face for as much as it meant to me. “The inner containment chamber is filled with gel that likely stabilized the system. What’s really interesting is that the stasis is only pulling a few watts of power. I’ve never seen a hibernation system draw such little juice.”
The autodoc finished the scan, now showing another screen on the display. This one I could at least begin to understand. A three-dimensional rendering of the object, all of its guts visible in the scan.
“There are two batteries,” Meg said, pointing to spheres at either end of the football. “One is depleted. The other charged to eighty percent. Leo, do the math.”
“What math?” he asked.
“The battery size divided by power draw, Leodiot. That’ll give us an estimate on how long the object has been running on internal power.”
“Oh. Sure.” He stared at the screen. “About fourteen years.”
“Wait, what?” Ben said.
“Sorry, no. That’s wrong. I forgot the drain on the second battery. Sixteen to eighteen years.”
“That’s almost as long as Head Case has existed,” Ben said. “There’s no way it’s been hiding down here that entire time.”
“Why not? When have we ever looked under the deck plating in the back corner?” Matt asked. “There’s hardly any light back there.”
“That’s the hibernation chamber,” Meg said, pointing to an apparently open cavity in the center.
“It’s tiny,” I said. “What the heck could fit in there?”
“Looks empty to me, man,” Tyler said.
“We need to dial in the resolution,” Meg explained, returning to the settings screen. She changed some variables and re-initiated the scan. I could hardly breathe, pulse pounding in excited anticipation of glimpsing the capsule’s mysterious occupant. Beside me, Alyssa tapped her foot impatiently. A form finally took shape within the cavity, small enough to easily fit inside my palm.
Everyone gathered closer, staring at the entity.
“Gross!” Ally grimaced at the image. “Is that some kind of mutant squid?”
I shared her assessment. The diminutive alien appeared to have a bi-lobed body with numerous tendrils that it had wrapped around itself. Despite its initially grotesque appearance, I found its delicate nature appealing.
“There’s our little stowaway,” Tyler quipped. “Someone smuggled an intergalactic jellyfish on board.”
“No,” Ben said. “It can’t be…” He trailed off, his nervous response suggesting he recognized the creature. “Meg, can you get a composition analysis out of the autodoc?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ben,” Matt warned. “Remember what you said about the external markings? Just because it looks like something familiar, that doesn’t mean it is.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m with you. But what if it is what it looks like? Meg?”
“Working on it,” she replied, entering the system’s command line and entering instructions that weren’t in the user interface. “I should be able to extract what we need, but it might take a while.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to be right now,” Ben replied. “The rest of you are free to continue whatever it was you were doing before we found the container.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, enjoying the mystery.
“Me either,” Alyssa agreed.
“My movie just finished. I might as well hang out with you guys,” Tyler said. “I can go to the galley and grab us some pizza, if you want?”
“We need to keep sick bay clean,” Matt said. “But thanks for the offer, Tee.”
“What do you think that is inside, Captain?” Alyssa asked.
“Let’s worry about that if I’m right,” he replied.
“Is it a good thing or a bad thing if you’re right?” I questioned.
“Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“While we’re waiting, maybe we can match the external markings to a known alphabet,” Leo suggested. “Considering the age of the capsule, it must have come from the Spiral. Meg, can you shoot a trace of the engravings over to Levi for processing?”
She sighed, leaving the terminal to enter a different set of screens and carry out his request. “Done.”
“Levi, match the capsule engraving to known alphanumerics used across the Spiral,” Leo said.
“Processing. Standby,” the AI replied.
We were left waiting impatiently once more, tension and excitement building. I expected Tyler to drop another quip or crack a joke, but he remained strangely quiet, as intrigued by the find as the rest of us. Levi won the race to provide the first answers.
“I have compared the engraving to every alphabet, iconography, and related character usage stored in our database,” the computer announced. “The symbols appear to be unique, but most closely match ancient Hiberian.”
“I’ve never heard of the Hiberians,” Leo said. “Are you sure?”
“There is a ninety-six percent probability my deduction is correct. The marking roughly translates to Asmarin Klatamin Gruck.”
“That’s not English,” Tyler said.
“Obviously,” Alyssa huffed.
“Levi, that can’t be an accurate translation,” Ben said. “It’s gibberish.”
“I am ninety-six percent certain it is Hiberian.”
“Where in the Spiral is Hiberia?” Matt asked.
“I can project the location on the flight deck or in the conference room. There are no projection systems in sick bay.”
“I’ll go up to the flight deck to check it out,” Matt said. “Levi, project the Spiral star map there, with Hiberia highlighted.”
“Projecting.”
Matt hurried out of sick bay. The door had just closed behind him when Meg finished her work.
“Okay, I’m running an analysis against our dataset of known organisms,” she said. The screen showed the organic composition of the hibernating organism on one side, a flow of known DNA patterns flipping past on the other in rapid succession. It surprised me how many different life forms Head Case had such intricate data for.
“I feel like I’m in a Vegas casino,” Tyler said in response to the visual.
“You’re too young to have been to a casino,” Ally replied.
“I’ve seen Ocean’s Eleven,” he answered. “Luck be a lady. Give us something good, not some kind of super human-devouring tentacle monster.”
The images finally stopped cycling, pausing on one. At the same moment, Matt burst back into the room.
“Ben, Hiberia is the original name of the planet Demitrus,” he said, his voice tight.
“It’s a match,” Meg said, her voice equally tense. “There’s an Aleal inside.”
Ben’s face paled. His eyes narrowed. I couldn’t tell if he was excited or angry or both.
“Alter,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 38
“We need to get Alter out of that thing,” Ben said eagerly.
“Whoa! Hold on there, bro,” Matt countered. “Let’s not be too quick to open that can of worms. If that thing’s an Aleal, we’re better off dumping it out of an airlock and forgetting we ever found it.”
"What's up, Noah-san?" Tyler replied. "Don't tell me you need me to tuck you in.”
Alyssa snorted. "As if. Get down here to the hangar. We found something and could use your he-man muscles." She smirked over at me. “That is, if you can get off your dead end for five minutes.”
Tyler's eye roll was practically audible through the link. “When did you two sneak away without a chaperone? I’m on my way, Your Majesty."
By the time Tyler loped down the stairs from the elevator a couple of minutes later, I’d located a toolkit and retrieved a pair of pry bars. I waved him over impatiently.
“It’s about time! Help us move this deck plate.”
“I had literally two minutes left in the movie. You wanted me to miss the ending, didn’t you?”
“How many times have you seen it?”
“Not the point.” Tyler dropped down beside me, eying the object beneath the deck. “What is that?"
"No clue, but the deck plate won't budge without both of us. Take that side," I said, handing him one of the pry bars. We wedged bars under opposite edges of the damaged plate, throwing our combined strength into lifting up the unyielding metal. I gritted my teeth at the strain, glad when the plate finally lifted enough for Alyssa to wiggle her fingers underneath it.
"Almost there! Push harder! Ally, lift!”
Finally, the panel lifted free. I sprawled backward, pry bar slipping from numb fingers. Tyler whooped triumphantly. "Hah! Take that, you dastardly deck plate!”
We gathered on three sides of the open square, looking down at the object nestled among multi-colored wiring. Metal, pill-shaped and a little smaller than a football, the sight sent an immediate dread coursing through me, raising goosebumps and shivering my spine.
“Does anyone else think that looks like the pills the Warden made us swallow?” I asked.
“Sort of,” Tyler agreed. “But how would it have gotten down there?”
“Maybe the Prall put it there,” Alyssa suggested.
“When did they have the chance? It took us five minutes to lift the panel out of the way and it made a racket. I know those ogres are strong, but I think we would have heard something.”
“Maybe the Warden is responsible,” I said. “Maybe not. Whatever it is, whoever it belongs to, I could be wrong, but I don’t think Ben knows it’s here.”
“Should we bring it to him?” Ally asked.
“I don’t think we should touch it,” Tyler answered. “What if it’s a bomb set to explode when it’s moved or something.”
I tapped my badge, fighting to steady my nerves and my voice. Our benign distraction had become something potentially more serious. "Captain, do you have a minute? We found something in the hangar I think you’ll want to see."
CHAPTER 37
Ben rushed through the elevator door at the rear of the hangar and trotted down the stairs to the hangar deck, skirting the Hunter's massive form as he hurried toward us. Shaq rode his shoulder, bluish fur standing on end. Apparently, even the Jagger sensed the gravity of our discovery.
"What did you find?" Ben asked breathlessly as he dropped to his knees at the edge of the opening in the deck plating. His eyes widened as he took in the metallic ovoid nestled in the wiring below. “What the hell is that?”
"Obviously, we have no idea," Tyler said. "We just found it under the deck plate. We were kind of hoping you knew it was there.”
Ben shook his head. “No. I didn’t know it was there. Have you tried moving it?"
"Are you crazy?” Ally retorted. “What if it's a bomb or something?"
"Valid point." Ben's brow crinkled. ”It's definitely concerning to find tech like that embedded in the ship without knowing how it works, why it's there, how long it’s been there, or who left it.” He reached for his comm badge. "Matt, Meg, Leo, are you busy?”
"Not at the moment,” Matt responded immediately. Meg replied similarly a few seconds later. “Leo’s in the head reading his horoscope,” she responded. “What's up?"
Tyler chuckled. Ben didn’t break a smile. "The three of you meet me in the hangar ASAP. We've got a mystery on our hands."
A few minutes later, Matt slid down the ladder rail and strolled casually across the deck toward us, the last to arrive. As usual, nothing seemed to faze his perpetually calm attitude. Even the sight of our ominous discovery earned only a raised eyebrow and a low whistle.
"Any theories on the football of doom?" he asked.
“All the markings on it are in another alphabet, and I guess the Warden’s translator only works on spoken language. Our best guess is that it's some kind of transmitter." Ben rubbed his jaw contemplatively. “Noah thinks maybe the Warden planted it onboard, which would explain how he’s able to track us wherever we go. Only none of us can come up with a plausible idea how it could have gotten it down there without anyone noticing." His eyes shifted to the twins. "Meg? Leo?”
"Don't look at us,” Meg replied. “If we dropped something that big into the hangar wiring, we'd remember.”
“Is it safe to move?” Matt asked.
“Your guess is as good as ours,” Ben answered.
“It isn’t connected to anything,” Leo said. “I think as long as we lift it gently and without changing its orientation, we should be safe.”
“Should be?” Tyler said. “That doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“I mean, we’ve been pushing some pretty high-G maneuvers lately, even after the Warden’s visit,” Matt said. “If nothing’s holding that thing down, I bet it’s already been tossed like my lunch when Ben flies the ship.”
“What?” Ben grumbled. “Do you remember the first time we played Star Squadron?”
“Yeah, but I was a different person back then. Point is, all signs point to yes with regards to the football being safe to carry.”
“I concur,” Leo said.
“Okay,” Ben decided. “Matt, you’re the jock. It’s your ball.”
“Meg and Leo are the science geeks,” Matt deferred. “They should handle it.”
“I’ll get a cart,” Leo said. “That’ll keep it mostly stable while we transfer it to sick bay for analysis.” He came out of his crouch and ran back up the stairs to the elevator.
“These lines look familiar,” Matt said, leaning in to trace some of the alien writing with the tip of his finger. “I feel like I’ve seen them somewhere before.”
“They resemble sigils,” Ben agreed. “That may be why they look familiar to you. But they aren’t sigils.”
“Maybe,” Matt conceded.
Leo returned with the hover cart in no time, guiding it to a stop directly adjacent to the open deck plate. He had arranged some towels in the center, creating a secure nest for the alien egg. “Ready when you are, Boss.”
“You should all stand back,” Matt said, crouching over the object. “Just in case.”
“If that thing blows, we’re all dead anyway,” Ben replied. “There’s only a few inches of steel beneath those wires. That’s all that’s sitting between us and compressed space.”
“Are you trying to scare me more than I already am?” Alyssa asked.
“Sorry,” Ben replied. “Matt, do it.”
Matt nodded, dropping to a knee and leaning beneath the level of the decking. He gently wrapped both hands around the bottom of the object, interlocking his fingers to ensure his cradle remained tight. Scooping the ovoid like it might be as brittle as an actual bird’s egg, he quickly stood and transferred it to the cart, lowering it quickly onto the towels. The flex of his muscles, followed by the sinkage of the towels, indicated the heavy weight of the device.
“The object’s secure,” Leo announced, allowing all of us to breathe a sigh of relief. Not that any of us felt truly relieved. Not with a discovery of something hidden right under our noses, and who knew for how long it had been there.
An ominous silence settled over the group as we rode the elevator up to Deck Two, our strange cargo secure on the hover cart in the center of the cab. If not for the occasional thrum synchronizing with fluctuations in the onboard reactor, I wouldn’t have been surprised if another malfunction in the elevator sigils had somehow caused time to stop. I wasn’t the only one. Both Tyler and Alyssa looked equally inpatient during the short ride, eager to either be rid of, away from, or at the very least identify the football’s purpose.
“What do we have in sick bay to help us identify this thing?” Ben asked, looking to the twins for answers.
“We can modify the autodoc to run a deeper penetration scan,” Leo said.
“That’ll at least tell us what’s inside,” Meg added.
“Like explosives?” Tyler asked.
“Including explosives.”
“How long will the modifications take?” Ben questioned.
“A few minutes,” Leo said. “We just need to change a few of the system settings through the interface. Our autodocs are older models, the kind that were initially produced as quality control for robot manufacturing, software updated to handle organic machines.”
“That’s a chilling thought,” Ally said.
“That’s what we are though, right?” Meg said. “At least, once you take out the soul. Organic machines. We all function the same.” She glanced at Ben. “Well, most of us.”
I didn’t know if she was referring to his ability to channel chaos energy or his brain tumor. Or maybe both. He was both supernatural and malfunctioning at the same time.
Reaching sick bay, Leo guided the cart into the first room, the same one Ben had scanned me in. Matt transferred the football onto the examination chair, careful to keep its position stable, while Meg tapped on the interface, cycling through menus long memorized. We waited with bated breath until she clicked her tongue in satisfaction, again glancing toward Ben. “We should be all set, Captain.”
“Run the scan,” he replied.
She initiated the autodoc. Multiple appendages shifted from overhead, red and green lasers sweeping over the seat and down to the object. The tools slowed once they made contact, taking their time examining the outer shell while invisible wavelengths pushed deeper into the metal. Multiple windows cluttered with metrics I couldn't decipher overlaid one another on the autodoc’s display. Meg’s sharp intake of breath hinted at her ability to understand the datastream.
"Figured it out already?" Ally leaned closer, head cocked.
"These readings suggest a self-contained cryostasis system," Meg explained.
"Cryo...you mean whatever's in there is alive?" I eyed the container uneasily. “Alien lifeforms haven’t worked out very well for us so far.”
“Assuming these readings are accurate.”
“Cryostasis requires incredibly precise calibration,” Leo protested. “Even minor disruption risks permanent systems failure and biological termination. All the jostling this egg must have been through during our run-in with the Achai probably killed whatever’s inside.”
“Normally I would agree,” Meg admitted. “But look at this.” She pointed to data that might as well have been a smiley face for as much as it meant to me. “The inner containment chamber is filled with gel that likely stabilized the system. What’s really interesting is that the stasis is only pulling a few watts of power. I’ve never seen a hibernation system draw such little juice.”
The autodoc finished the scan, now showing another screen on the display. This one I could at least begin to understand. A three-dimensional rendering of the object, all of its guts visible in the scan.
“There are two batteries,” Meg said, pointing to spheres at either end of the football. “One is depleted. The other charged to eighty percent. Leo, do the math.”
“What math?” he asked.
“The battery size divided by power draw, Leodiot. That’ll give us an estimate on how long the object has been running on internal power.”
“Oh. Sure.” He stared at the screen. “About fourteen years.”
“Wait, what?” Ben said.
“Sorry, no. That’s wrong. I forgot the drain on the second battery. Sixteen to eighteen years.”
“That’s almost as long as Head Case has existed,” Ben said. “There’s no way it’s been hiding down here that entire time.”
“Why not? When have we ever looked under the deck plating in the back corner?” Matt asked. “There’s hardly any light back there.”
“That’s the hibernation chamber,” Meg said, pointing to an apparently open cavity in the center.
“It’s tiny,” I said. “What the heck could fit in there?”
“Looks empty to me, man,” Tyler said.
“We need to dial in the resolution,” Meg explained, returning to the settings screen. She changed some variables and re-initiated the scan. I could hardly breathe, pulse pounding in excited anticipation of glimpsing the capsule’s mysterious occupant. Beside me, Alyssa tapped her foot impatiently. A form finally took shape within the cavity, small enough to easily fit inside my palm.
Everyone gathered closer, staring at the entity.
“Gross!” Ally grimaced at the image. “Is that some kind of mutant squid?”
I shared her assessment. The diminutive alien appeared to have a bi-lobed body with numerous tendrils that it had wrapped around itself. Despite its initially grotesque appearance, I found its delicate nature appealing.
“There’s our little stowaway,” Tyler quipped. “Someone smuggled an intergalactic jellyfish on board.”
“No,” Ben said. “It can’t be…” He trailed off, his nervous response suggesting he recognized the creature. “Meg, can you get a composition analysis out of the autodoc?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ben,” Matt warned. “Remember what you said about the external markings? Just because it looks like something familiar, that doesn’t mean it is.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m with you. But what if it is what it looks like? Meg?”
“Working on it,” she replied, entering the system’s command line and entering instructions that weren’t in the user interface. “I should be able to extract what we need, but it might take a while.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to be right now,” Ben replied. “The rest of you are free to continue whatever it was you were doing before we found the container.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, enjoying the mystery.
“Me either,” Alyssa agreed.
“My movie just finished. I might as well hang out with you guys,” Tyler said. “I can go to the galley and grab us some pizza, if you want?”
“We need to keep sick bay clean,” Matt said. “But thanks for the offer, Tee.”
“What do you think that is inside, Captain?” Alyssa asked.
“Let’s worry about that if I’m right,” he replied.
“Is it a good thing or a bad thing if you’re right?” I questioned.
“Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“While we’re waiting, maybe we can match the external markings to a known alphabet,” Leo suggested. “Considering the age of the capsule, it must have come from the Spiral. Meg, can you shoot a trace of the engravings over to Levi for processing?”
She sighed, leaving the terminal to enter a different set of screens and carry out his request. “Done.”
“Levi, match the capsule engraving to known alphanumerics used across the Spiral,” Leo said.
“Processing. Standby,” the AI replied.
We were left waiting impatiently once more, tension and excitement building. I expected Tyler to drop another quip or crack a joke, but he remained strangely quiet, as intrigued by the find as the rest of us. Levi won the race to provide the first answers.
“I have compared the engraving to every alphabet, iconography, and related character usage stored in our database,” the computer announced. “The symbols appear to be unique, but most closely match ancient Hiberian.”
“I’ve never heard of the Hiberians,” Leo said. “Are you sure?”
“There is a ninety-six percent probability my deduction is correct. The marking roughly translates to Asmarin Klatamin Gruck.”
“That’s not English,” Tyler said.
“Obviously,” Alyssa huffed.
“Levi, that can’t be an accurate translation,” Ben said. “It’s gibberish.”
“I am ninety-six percent certain it is Hiberian.”
“Where in the Spiral is Hiberia?” Matt asked.
“I can project the location on the flight deck or in the conference room. There are no projection systems in sick bay.”
“I’ll go up to the flight deck to check it out,” Matt said. “Levi, project the Spiral star map there, with Hiberia highlighted.”
“Projecting.”
Matt hurried out of sick bay. The door had just closed behind him when Meg finished her work.
“Okay, I’m running an analysis against our dataset of known organisms,” she said. The screen showed the organic composition of the hibernating organism on one side, a flow of known DNA patterns flipping past on the other in rapid succession. It surprised me how many different life forms Head Case had such intricate data for.
“I feel like I’m in a Vegas casino,” Tyler said in response to the visual.
“You’re too young to have been to a casino,” Ally replied.
“I’ve seen Ocean’s Eleven,” he answered. “Luck be a lady. Give us something good, not some kind of super human-devouring tentacle monster.”
The images finally stopped cycling, pausing on one. At the same moment, Matt burst back into the room.
“Ben, Hiberia is the original name of the planet Demitrus,” he said, his voice tight.
“It’s a match,” Meg said, her voice equally tense. “There’s an Aleal inside.”
Ben’s face paled. His eyes narrowed. I couldn’t tell if he was excited or angry or both.
“Alter,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 38
“We need to get Alter out of that thing,” Ben said eagerly.
“Whoa! Hold on there, bro,” Matt countered. “Let’s not be too quick to open that can of worms. If that thing’s an Aleal, we’re better off dumping it out of an airlock and forgetting we ever found it.”
