Ensign Probus

by Wendie Nordgren

  Zared grinned at me. He, Dario, and Yukihyo could feel my nervous excitement through the empathic bonds we shared. I knew visiting a recycling center on a dead moon wasn’t anything to them, but it was something completely different for me. It was an opportunity to put to use some of the new skills I’d been learning at the Inquisitors Academy. Hurrying, I dressed in an environmental suit, snapped a medical kit to my belt, checked and holstered my blasters, and glanced around to see the others had done the same.

  “Chirp?” Thunderdrop couldn’t fit in a suit but wanted to come with us.

  Yukihyo said, “He’ll be safe. The suits are simply a precaution.”

  “Will you be warm enough?” I asked Thunderdrop.

  “Clack chirp chitter.” He said he’d know once the door opened.

  I grabbed a small thermal blanket and shoved it in one of my pockets just in case. Together, we took the lift down, and Dario lowered the ramp. As we walked down it, our footsteps echoed, the sound bouncing off the docking bay walls and breaking the stifling silence. We had finally made it. Thunderdrop blinked and chirped at me to let me know he was okay and led the way to my team. Clark and Izaac held blaster rifles at the ready. Their lights added some much-needed illumination to the docking bay. Leaving the group with which he’d travelled, Phillip joined us. Glancing around, I noticed Yukihyo, Dario, and Zared had taken up positions around my team.

  “We don’t need supervision. We can do this on our own,” I said defensively.

  Deciding not to fight me, Dario said, “Have it your way but keep Phillip and Izaac with you.”

  I gave him a nod. I was capable of compromise.

  From where he kneeled at a control panel, Ross said, “I have full access to the base.” He stood, and a heavy set of metal sliding door panels opened. They led out into a corridor. “Security is at a minimum. Apparently, not even thieves take much of an interest in scrap and space junk.”

  We were alone. At some point, the others had left us. The eleven of us remaining proceeded with our mission. Thunderdrop’s claws clicked against the flooring as we made our way inside of the base and left the docking bay behind us. Reaching over to my left arm, I pushed the command on my suit to record.

  Levi reported, “The station is extensive. There are twelve storage depositories in which loads are decontaminated and sorted. Radioactive materials are stored on the other side of the moon in aquatic suspension pods. A habitation area contains bunks and bare necessities for crews who are forced to disembark and make repairs. Otherwise, it’s vacant. Robots do all of the work.” After verifying that his probe had transmitted to us all of its data, he sent it off to collect more.

  Clark said, “I suggest breaking up into two groups and dividing the depositories equally. We’ll cover more ground a lot quicker if we do.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “Original teams?” Cedrenus asked.

  We nodded.

  Stayton said, “We meet back here in two hours.”

  Each of us set our suits to alert us when it was time to head back. I glanced over at Thunderdrop. The base walls were so banged up that Thunderdrop was able to climb them. He was just as eager to explore as we were, and the cold didn’t seem to be affecting him.

  “Alright, take the east side. We’ll take the west. Move out,” Clark ordered.

  Joining my team were Thunderdrop, Izaac, and Phillip. I frowned at Phillip. Noticing, he said, “Don’t worry, Cupcake. We won’t do anything to interfere. I’m only here in case of a medical emergency, and Izaac’s here to protect you. We promise not to help you cheat.”

  Outraged, I was about to tell him off when I noticed the two of them laughing.

  “Teagan, hurry up,” Cedrenus called over his shoulder.

  He, Binder, and Ross were already several feet ahead of us down the corridor. It soon became clear to me why Thunderdrop ran along on the wall beside me. Beneath my boots, the flooring in the corridor was nothing more than a series of metal grates. My arachnid friend didn’t want his claws or legs getting stuck, and I didn’t blame him. Hurrying along the noisy walkway, I caught up with my team. The corridor ended with a set of doors leading out to a walking bridge. It was wide enough for a roller to cross from one building and into the next. Metal railings were the only thing between us and a long drop to barren, rocky ground.

  Tilting my head back, I looked up at the dome above us. I asked, “Shouldn’t the corridors be wider for like loads of metal and crap?”

  Binder turned to me and showed me his vid-screen and some schematics of the base. “These corridors are mainly for humanoid and robotic use. Unloading and loading of materials is accomplished with pods which are ejected from scows into automated holds. They can be remotely guided without a captain even bothering to dock. It might have been how they managed to trap the Empress, knowing pods filled with debris would appear non-threatening to our scans and springing the trap once we’d flown into it.”

  “How is it accomplished?” Cedrenus asked him.

  “It looks like a series of tracking and receiving beacons, pretty simple.”

  “Simple enough for Laconian hybrids to use the system to their advantage?” I asked.

  “Let’s find that alloy,” Cedrenus suggested.

  Passing into the next building, we entered our first storage facility.

  “Chirp! Chirp!” Someone was eager to explore.

  I gazed around the massive storage facility with a sinking feeling in my guts. It was easily four times the size of any warehouse into which I had ever been. “Time to get to work. Thunderdrop, stay close to me. It’s too dangerous in here for you to go off on your own.” Pulling out my vid-screen, I set it to scan for unfamiliar materials, specifically our mysterious alloy.

  “Chitter.” He wasn’t happy about it, but none-the-less he did as I asked of him.

  Metal shelving rose up from floor to ceiling. Each of the shelves was stacked with bins which had been filled and separated robotically and now sat waiting to be recycled. Machines sat like sleeping giants, their long metal, ski-like arms resting on the ground before them. They waited to be awakened to lift the heavy bins from their compartments and move them to a central conveyer belt which led off toward a closed hatch door, large enough for a land transport to enter. I imagined how noisy the facility would be during its operation.

  Splitting up, each of us took a quadrant and started scanning. An hour later, I hadn’t found anything. A loud clatter startled me, and I almost jumped out of my environmental suit.

  “Clack.” Thunderdrop looked down at me with wide eyes and a leg raised, frozen in the act of digging around in a big bin full of metal.

  I was about to put the crumbling grey, metal bar he’d dropped back into the bin, but he beat me to it while blinking contritely at me.

  Phillip held his scanner up, making a pass with it. He had a puzzled expression on his face.

  “What is it?” I asked as Thunderdrop and I approached him.

  “Well, I’m picking up the life sign you discovered, but it’s not a rat. Actually, I’m not sure what it is or how exactly it’s alive.”

  Looking at the screen over his shoulder, I asked, “What do you mean? It’s either alive or it isn’t.”

  Phillip studied his readings. “Whatever it is has a self-sustaining system and can evolve, so the Galaxic Government’s guidelines consider it to be a life form.”

  Cedrenus walked over to us. “Well, we didn’t have any luck here, so let’s go investigate. Then, we can turn our full attention to the next storage facility, but we need to be quick. We check in with the others in an hour.”

  Pointing at the blip on Phillip’s screen, I said, “It looks like it’s in a compartment two facilities over.”

  “Alright,” Binder said. “Keep your weapons at the ready. Whatever it is could be potentially dangerous. Thunderdrop, guard Teagan’s back.”

  “Chirp!” He jumped to the back of my environmental suit, placing two claws over each of my shoulders
and resting his head atop my helmet.

  “Comfortable?” I snorted a laugh at him.

  “Chirp!”

  I sent my worried thoughts to Izaac. I couldn’t help being concerned for my babies. “Is the life form dangerous? Can it hurt us?”

  He shook his head. A look of intense concentration was on his face. Into my mind, he said, “Like Phillip, I don’t understand what it is, but I feel drawn to it. It doesn’t have the cognitive abilities of a humanoid or the ability to communicate, but I sense something vague.”

  “Is it a plant or something?”

  “No, it’s more than that, but doesn’t feel hunger.” He sent me his feelings of uncertainty.

  Drawing a blaster, I followed Cedrenus. Above us and along the length of the tunnel-like corridor we entered, ducts ran its length continuing outside and above the walkway and into the next facility. I kept an eye on the vents. What if the lifeform decided to hunt us from above? Lifting my scanner, I discovered the vents did nothing more than recycle oxygen.

  “What a lonely place this is to be trapped and all alone,” I mused.

  “Chirp.”

  The base was made up of a collection of warehouses that were filled with scraps of metal. Some of it would be refashioned and given new life, one where people might be around, but most of it would remain here in storage bins forever at rest with pre-programmed machinery for company. I thought of the Empress and the rambunctious theatrics of my family and friends. I cherished each of them. Once, my life had been contained within a small bin on Earth, a housing unit, a step up from being on the streets, and my job had been akin to that of the robots on Luna 241, picking up and sorting refuse. I wondered if the lifeform trapped here was as desperate to leave this hunk of rock as I had been to leave Earth.

  Stayton approached a control panel and pressed a button, opening a huge set of doors which retracted into the corridor walls with a faint hiss of stale air. Moving in front of us, Phillip held up his scanner and entered first. This warehouse was identical to the one we had just searched.

  Phillip said, “It’s here. Somewhere… I can’t seem to get a lock on it.”

  Izaac walked beside him with his rifle ready while reaching out with his senses, but he didn’t know where to begin searching any better than Phillip did. It was almost as if the lifeform was hiding from them. Lifting my blaster in one hand and my vid-screen in the other, I started my own search. Cedrenus and Binder gave me nods before going about their own searches.

  “Go up and look in the bins above us for anything odd.”

  “Chirp.”

  Pulling my probe from where I’d attached it to my belt, I sent it up after him.

  “Anything?” Phillip asked.

  I stared at my screen. My probe confirmed a life sign in addition to ours but couldn’t pinpoint it. “It’s almost like a child is playing Hide and Seek with us.”

  Suddenly, Izaac lifted me into his arms and took me down to the floor, covering me with his body. He held his rifle ready. Phillip dropped down beside us. I could hear the sounds of blaster fire.

  “Intruders, identify yourselves,” an automated voice ordered.

  I heard Ross reply, “We are not intruders. We need to make emergency repairs to our vessel.”

  “Unauthorized area.” It sounded like a weapon was charging up.

  “We need a piece of metal to repair our hull and came here to find it,” Stayton replied.

  Izaac stood slowly and helped me to my feet. Thunderdrop landed on my back, and I activated my visual displacement shielding, rendering the two of us undetectable.

  “Restricted area. Relocate to habitat deck immediately. Danger.”

  “We have to go with it, or it will send out an alarm to the Militia. I can’t disable it quickly enough to avoid it. I’ll need a few minutes,” Ross said while he worked on the codes.

  Izaac whispered into my mind, “It has just scanned us but didn’t find you. Stay and search.”

  “What about Yukihyo and the others?” I telepathically asked.

  He pulled my mind along with his and showed me what Zared saw. The section in which they were had been closed off with forcefields as if to contain a breach. Rovek worked furiously to bring the energy walls down. Then, Izaac sought out Clark and his team. They had been trapped behind walls of energy, too. Izaac whispered in my mind, “We must have been the team closest in proximity to the robotic guard. I’ll share with the others what is happening. Apparently, we’ll all need rescuing unless Rovek can disable it.”

  He fell in line with the others behind a seven-foot-tall, white plasti robot with glowing blue eyes and fully charged weapons attached to its forearms. I held still and remained quiet for a few minutes after the doors had closed. Then, I heard both Zared and Izaac’s thoughts.

  Zared said, “Eli suspects the AI has been programmed to guard something.”

  “Then, if it came here first, whatever it is must be in this warehouse,” I thought.

  “Our thoughts exactly,” Izaac said.

  “Is it disabled yet?”

  “No, we must be careful, or it will send out an alert,” Izaac reminded me.

  Deactivating my visual displacement shielding, I decided to search for the alloy rather than the mysterious and elusive lifeform that could be a moth or something and almost jumped out of my suit for a second time when I sensed someone behind me.

  “Chitter chitter!”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten either of you. We need to rescue the others,” Cedrenus said.

  “I thought you were with them.”

  He shook his head. “I did the same as you and hid.”

  After telling him what I had learned from my hybrid warriors, the three of us started searching with renewed efforts. Thunderdrop took the highest shelves, not that he could use a scanner or the probe, but he liked to be helpful. I watched as his black legs and bluish-grey abdomen disappeared several feet above. The bins in which I looked were filled to their brims with warped, jagged scraps of metal. I walked up and down rows, scanning. Then, something odd a row over caught my attention. It was an empty bin and completely out of place. Abandoning my systematic search, I walked over and looked inside.

  “Cedrenus, I think I’ve found it!” Readings on my vid-screen confirmed it. The small piece of metal, no larger than my palm, rested on the bottom of an otherwise empty bin.

  Cedrenus’ hurried footsteps echoed throughout the massive warehouse as he joined me. Bending over, I reached in and took it, holding the metal on the palm of my gloved hand while I scanned it.

  “Can you tell what it is?” he asked.

  The metal was brown and black, swirled together like washed-out paint, but something iridescent shimmered and moved across its surface.

  “No, it isn’t naturally occurring in any of the known universes.” I grinned proudly at him through my helmet’s visor. “Whatever it is, we got it first.” I secured it inside one of my pockets.

  “Teagan?” Cedrenus sounded bewildered. “That piece of metal….” He stared at his vid-screen and then into my eyes. “It’s the source of the life signs we’ve been picking up.”

  “There must be some mistake. We weren’t able to get a solid reading on the lifeform.” Nervously, I glanced down at my pocket.

  “We’ll look into it later. Right now, we need to distract the AI, liberate our people, and get out of here.”

  Thunderdrop dangled from a line of silk that he’d attached to the shelf above and watched us.

  “Agreed.” Lifting my hand for my spider, I followed Cedrenus to the doors and out into the corridor.

  The metal grates beneath our boots began to vibrate. We looked from our feet and around the corridor. That was when I saw it. Coming straight at us along the narrow passage was a heavy piece of loading equipment. It made me think of what the offspring of a forklift and a tank would look like.

  “Um… what should we do?”

  Cedrenus turned back to the doors, but as soon as he did
, we heard the distinct heavy click of their locking mechanism engaging. The machine’s track plates rolled steadily toward us, and a red light on it activated in a flash. He said, “We could jump onto the lift arms and climb over it.”

  “You can, but I can’t! I’m pregnant. Remember?”

  “Alright. Run!”

  Holding a hand beneath my protruding abdomen to support it, I started a slow jog. Running wasn’t an option. Turning, he saw how far behind I was. With a determined expression, he ran back to me, pumping his arms and legs.

  “Go! Get to the next crosswalk! I’ll try to disable it!” Quickly passing me, he leapt up onto one of the machine’s long, metal arms and climbed the massive beast. “It doesn’t have a seat or a control panel!”

  I made it to the doors which led out to the crosswalk, but they were jammed just like the others. I slammed my palm against them in frustration.

  “Chitter clack chirp?” Thunderdrop lifted up on his back legs and tapped against the doors over my head.

  “They’re locked!” I turned back to Cedrenus.

  He was firing his weapons into the leviathan, but it kept grinding up the distance between us. Eight claws tapped at the grating beneath our feet before leaving the floor for a wall. Prying off a wall panel, I studied it while consulting my vid-screen. Then, I yanked out the green and orange wires. Detaching their ends, I struck them together. A puff of air was my reward as the locking mechanism released.

  “Cedrenus, help!” I wedged my fingers between the inch of space I’d made but didn’t have the strength to pry the doors open. Casting my gaze around for a tool, I found nothing.

  Cedrenus came to my side. Bracing his boots, he wedged his fingers into the opening and strained. Through his faceplate, I could see his veins bulging in his neck. Behind us, the sound of advancement stopped. I noticed Thunderdrop. He had begun the hasty construction of a floor to ceiling web in a futile effort to protect us.

  “Chitter! Chitter! Chitter!” he angrily castigated the robotic nightmare.

  An echo reverberated throughout the corridor as a base-wide announcement system activated. A woman’s voice said, “Lady Alaric Montgomery Lee or is it Lady Bosh? Which do you prefer?”