by Rexx Deane
‘I’m going to get some rest,’ Sebastian said. Aryx’s eyes had dark patches in the outer corners, too. ‘I suggest you take some time away from wrestling with that data – you look tired.’
‘If you insist. I might end up having some more ideas after a break.’ Aryx stowed the mobipack in a locker and headed down the lift.
‘I’ll meet you here tomorrow,’ Sebastian said as he left the ship. ‘And I’ll bring the box from my locker for you to take a look at. Sorry about forgetting it again.’ He tapped a reminder into his wristcom to collect it, but by the time he reached the bottom of the ramp, Aryx had wheeled halfway to the door of the hangar and turned back to face the ship. He was pointing at the airlock.
‘They’ve scratched the paintwork!’
Sebastian turned around. The Sollers Hope docking cowl had abraded a large, fuzzy rectangle around the doorway. ‘The bastards!’
***
Sebastian put the N-suit into his apartment’s cleaning unit as soon as he arrived. The office computer still hadn’t finished processing the video from the explosion, and if he kept thinking about it, the stress of the investigation would overwhelm him. He had to stop, do something else. There was nothing further he could do until the nanobots formed the tracking modules, which would be at least a day or two. The data on the melted blob was still a mystery and a change of scenery might trigger a flash of inspiration; it was still early – the atrium would probably be quiet, and a jog around the station would do him good.
He made his way to the terminal and took the lift to one of the shopping malls. The place was packed with people of various races, milling around, trading, chatting, and eating at the many food stalls. Quiet indeed! After three years, he still hadn’t learned.
The worst of the tsunami’s aftermath had been cleared, but a handful of shops were still closed. The station would have a big insurance case on its hands and would undoubtedly end up trying not to pay out, filing the incident under the clause ‘Acts of God’.
Sebastian laughed through his nose. Most insurers didn’t cover ‘acts of terrorism’, either.
After wandering aimlessly through the markets for an hour, he found himself jogging around the atrium’s lower level, beside the river. He stopped by one of the many water features to catch his breath and began daydreaming as he watched the large koi swim about. How nice it must be to not have a care in the world.
His wristcom bleeped with an incoming call from Agent Gladrin.
‘How is the investigation going, Thorsson?’
‘Slow, Sir. We’ve hit a lot of dead ends, but I’m waiting for a couple of leads to mature.’
‘Interesting choice of words. I’d provide you with some support, but I’m still out of the sector. When you turn up something concrete, let me know.’
‘I’ll be sure to, Sir. I haven’t yet had time to start the task you assigned to me. If my leads don’t come in, we hope to start work on that tomorrow. Aryx has been helping with the technical analysis on the evidence from the lab.’
‘A good choice, then. Keep up the good work. I’ll catch up with you in person when I can. Gladrin out.’ The wristcom went quiet. At least he wasn’t pushing for a resolution.
Sebastian resumed walking, and it took another two hours to do a full circuit of the atrium and get back to his apartment. After a quick shower he crashed on the bed, exhausted, and fell straight to sleep.
***
Sebastian woke on his back. The apartment was in total darkness and even the bedside clock showed no time – had the power failed? He tried to get out of bed but found only a dull, wooden resistance in his legs. When he tried to sit, his arms had the same senseless quality, and he slumped back. Partial sleep paralysis, that’s what it was. It would wear off soon. He lay blinking in the dark listening to his breath, waiting for the paralysis to subside and sensation to return.
Minutes passed.
From behind the quiet echo of his breath, another sound emerged. A faint, wet slopping sound. Holding his breath, he strained to listen.
The sound grew louder. It reminded him of a nature video he’d seen once, in which a hedgehog had eaten a slug. That horrible, wet chomping had stuck with him his entire life.
He listened for several seconds, but couldn’t contain it any longer. Still unable to move, he shouted, ‘Lights!’
The apartment illumination blinked on.
A small, imp-like creature sat on his lower abdomen. Its skin was red and shiny, and its clawed hands glistened with a dark, oily substance. As the image sank in, he realised the demonic baby-thing was elbow-deep in his quivering intestines!
He screamed, and in the next instant the thing was gone. He moved his hand over the area that had been a gaping wound a second earlier.
A nightmare again, but how real it felt. They had to stop, and soon. He eased himself back onto the pillow and rolled over to face the clock.
The time read 03.10.
***
He woke before his alarm went off. As with previous nightmares, he couldn’t recall the exact details, but he was beginning to get irritated with his disrupted sleep patterns. His face felt rough, and rubbing his eyes did little to clear his blurry vision. If this kept up, he’d have to start taking sedatives, and that wouldn’t help his work.
After a quick breakfast, he cleaned his teeth and went about his daily preparations. As he put on the freshly cleaned N-suit, his wristcom beeped with a reminder to collect the box. He finished dressing and went to the security office to pick it up.
When he eventually arrived at the repair hangar, Aryx was already there, standing facing the ship and wearing the mobipack. How tall he looked! Sebastian had got so used to seeing him at wheelchair height he hadn’t stopped to think about what Aryx might have been like before. He’d changed his work clothes for something more casual: a brown, sleeveless padded leather jacket and a pair of baggy trousers with the legs stitched up. His arm was moving rhythmically back and forth in front of him. Sebastian cleared his throat.
Aryx stopped and turned around. ‘Hi!’ he shouted. ‘I didn’t hear you there.’
‘What are you doing? Anyone could come in and see you!’
‘I couldn’t really do it in the chair, could I?’ Aryx wiped away the last streak of polish from the airlock with a rag. ‘The scratches annoyed me so much I had to repaint it.’
A lump in Sebastian’s throat made it difficult to swallow. ‘Thank you,’ he said, putting his hand on Aryx’s shoulder.
‘No problem. I finished reading my book and couldn’t just sit around all day. I wasn’t in the mood to work on the patent for these.’ Aryx gestured down at his glowing legs. ‘So doing this was the next best thing to occupy me.’
‘Just make sure nobody sees them.’ Sebastian stepped into the ship and turned in the doorway. ‘I’ve got a present for you, when you’re finished.’
‘Oh?’
‘I brought the box for you to have a look at.’
‘About bloody time!’
Sebastian sat at the diagnostics console, took the metal box from his pack, and placed it on the work surface. A few moments later Aryx pulled up next to him in his wheelchair and slid the mobipack under the workbench.
‘I was lucky not to bump into Karan when I went to get it. I wasn’t really in the mood to be interrogated. I hate having to give her the brush-off.’
‘It’s just as well,’ Aryx said with a laugh. ‘She could talk the legs off a Q’vani!’
Sebastian smiled, but didn’t join his laughter; it was time to find out what was in the box. He picked it up and pressed his thumb to the print-lock for several seconds until a beep sounded.
‘Give me your thumb.’
The box bleeped as Aryx placed his thumb on the lock, pairing the clearance to his identity.
‘Open it.’
He pressed his thumb to the lock again.
With a click, the upper third of the metal container split and he eased off the top.
Chapter 11
Sebastian clamped his hands between his legs while Aryx examined the box – far too slowly and ceremoniously for his liking; the tension was palpable. He wanted to rip it out of his hands, flip the lid open and slap the contents down onto the console just to end the mystery.
Aryx slid a tightly fitting metal cube from the box and placed it on the workbench. It measured three inches across, and was finished in a satin gunmetal. The edges and corners were chamfered off to a depth of two millimetres, softening the otherwise sharp, square edges while retaining definition, and on one side was a small red button, inset in a circular chamfered recess. A small panel, marked by a rectangular groove, took up the rear half of the top, while a deep groove cut across the top, down the sides and around the back, roughly a third from the bottom. The lower quarter of the front housed ten vertical slits.
Sebastian turned the cube around to view the other sides. ‘Do you think that’s a joint in the casing?’ he said, pointing to the deep groove.
Aryx picked the cube up and turned it over in his hands. ‘Could be. There are some kind of fastenings,’ he said, pointing to two circular indentations either side, just inside the right angle of the groove.
On the opposite side to the button was a long, chamfered vertical recess, inset with a raised strip with horizontal segments sunk into it.
‘Could that be some sort of linear display bar?’
‘It seems a bit simple, if it is. A device with a button and a strip of lights.’ Aryx laughed. ‘Maybe it measures how long you hold the button down.’
Sebastian rolled his eyes.
Aryx continued to turn the cube. The bottom face was plain, except for a large stylised number one embossed in the metal. ‘Let’s try something.’ He put the cube back on the console. ‘Computer, scan the object and analyse.’
The console whirred, emitted several loud clicks, and stopped. ‘Interior analysis not possible on this station. Device is shielded.’
‘Shielded by what?’
‘Exterior casing is composed of tungsten carbide alloys. The alloys are disrupting the scan beams. Intensified scans may damage any internal componentry.’
‘Is it giving off any emissions?’ Sebastian asked.
‘Low-level broad-spectrum EM emissions are detectable. Configuration unknown.’
‘Can you perform an extended analysis on the emissions?’
‘No. Emissions have stopped.’
Sebastian frowned. ‘That’s odd. It could be intermittent, I suppose, but why would you shield something that sent and received transmissions?’
Aryx held up a screwdriver. ‘You think we should try to open it?’
‘Just be careful not to damage it, please.’
He put the screwdriver in the ridge at the top of the cube and strained until he went red in the face. He paused, repositioned the cube, and attempted again. The veins on his neck swelled to the size of a garden hose. The screwdriver bent in half. He tried another.
Sebastian put his hands out. ‘Stop. I don’t think you’re going to do it. I don’t want to take you to hospital.’
Aryx put the cube on the console. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said, breathing heavily. There wasn’t a scratch on it; the alloy had resisted all break-in attempts.
‘I’m worried if we try to force our way in through the casing, it might get damaged internally. For the moment, we’ll just have to monitor its emissions to see if it starts again.’
‘Of course, we could always try this—’ Aryx leaned forwards and put his thumb on the button.
No! Sebastian reached forwards to stop him.
Click.
‘Why did you do that, you psycho!’ he yelled. ‘It could have been anything!’
‘You said they’d already checked it wasn’t explosive.’ Aryx folded his arms across his chest. ‘Anyway, nothing happened.’
‘That’s beside the point.’
‘You didn’t seem too concerned with safety precautions yourself. I could see you itching to get it out of the box.’ He shrugged. ‘And I can’t see Gladrin giving a newbie like you something really dangerous to investigate.’
‘Well … don’t do it again, or I’ll leave you here next time I have to go somewhere. What’s the button supposed to be for, if it doesn’t do anything?’
‘You’re asking the wrong person. Why doesn’t your SpecOps boss know what this is?’
‘It’s supposed to be a test for me, us, to investigate, remember?’
‘Yeah, yeah, it’s just frustrating having to investigate this thing and all that evidence, especially with that melted lump producing gibberish.’
Sebastian softened his tone. ‘I’m sure we’ll work out what it is, given time. I suppose we could try searching for a visual match to the cube.’ He took pictures of it from various angles using his wristcom and uploaded them to the computer. ‘Search image database for a match to the ones I’ve just uploaded.’
‘Acknowledged. Searching.’
He picked the cube up and turned it in his hands while he waited for the results. Aryx turned back to the melted lump of plastic wired into the console.
‘You know what,’ Sebastian said, waving the cube in the direction of the lump. ‘This looks almost the same size as that thing.’
Aryx looked up from his work. ‘I suppose, but this is plastic and has nothing to do with SpecOps.’
‘You said it looked like the lump had a casing. This could be made from the same organoplastic on the inside.’
He scratched his head. ‘Without breaking it open, which I can’t, we have no way to know.’
‘That’s it! We could put a nanocamera into one of those vents to see what’s inside.’
‘Hold on.’ Aryx wheeled to the lift and left the ship.
A moment later, he came back with a bundle of fine, glassy thread with a block attached to one end. ‘I have this – it’s a microfibre camera.’ He handed the optical thread to Sebastian and paired the diagnostic console with the block on the other end.
Sebastian fed the thread into one of the vents on the front of the cube. On the monitor, the edges of several long metal plates appeared.
‘That’s a heat sink,’ Aryx said. ‘Self-contained and separate from the main unit. That would explain why there’s nothing else in there.’
‘Very strange—’ Sebastian’s wristcom bleeped.
‘Incoming message from security TI.’
He put the cube and camera back on the console. ‘Put it through.’
‘Sebastian, station tracking has detected a weak signal on the locator frequency you provided.’
‘Great!’ He punched the air in victory, jumped up, and threw himself into the pilot’s seat. ‘Where’s the signal coming from? Show me on the piloting console.’
The Galactic map appeared with a flashing red dot, indicating the position of the tracker; it had picked up the signal from three astrolocation beacons and relayed its coordinates back to the station, giving its position to solar system accuracy. Aryx wheeled over and Sebastian expanded the view of the region. As the map zoomed in, the realistic Galactic cloud gave way to a stark black background and representational model of orbital paths and stellar information. The system, Yazor, appeared empty – a single star with no planetary bodies.
‘Does this mean our tracker is aboard a ship?’ Aryx asked.
‘Possibly, or a small unregistered station is parked in orbit around that star. Either way, we’re in for another trip.’
‘I’m going to try working on that data again while you pilot. I might not be a programmer, but I need something to do. I haven’t got time to waste looking out of the windows anymore.’
‘Sounds like a plan. Are we all set?’
‘Yes, food’s still in the chiller. Didn’t use any of it.’
Sebastian grinned. ‘As long as your stomach’s catered for, that’s the most important thing.’
‘Such disrespect.’ Aryx shook his head and made his way back to the diagnostic console.
>
Sebastian tapped away. ‘Computer, plot a course for that system and take us out.’
***
Blue-shifted stars slid by like bright hurricane rain on a window.
‘What are you going to do when we get there?’ Aryx asked, looking up from his work.
‘It depends on what we find. If it turns out to be a bunch of gun-toting lunatics on a ship, then we get out of there and call for backup.’
‘And if not?’
‘Then I calmly introduce myself, try to find out what they’re using carbyne for, and whether they’ve got a motive to blow things up. Tactfully, of course.’
‘Good luck with that. I wouldn’t have the patience.’ Aryx turned back to the data-filled screen.
Sebastian watched him as he stared at the pages of random characters. ‘I’m sorry for dragging you around with me. I know you’re glad to get off the station, but I can’t help but worry what danger I might be putting you in. I don’t know how I’d cope in your situation.’
Aryx continued to watch the screens. ‘It’s okay, I’m not exactly a stranger to danger, and as for my situation, you’ve helped me get the pack working. You know how I hate programming. I don’t understand it, and it’s not like anything else that I can just take apart to make sense of. So don’t feel bad – without your help I wouldn’t have it working and I’d never have got off-station.’
Sebastian smiled. At least he didn’t have to feel guilty anymore.
‘Of course, I will mind if you’re about to thrust me head first into the jaws of death.’
What the heck was he expecting to find when they arrived at Yazor? Would it be Humans or another race – or even a race nobody had ever heard of?
Sebastian was constantly surprised by the life in the universe. While many planets had great diversity of life upon them, the most unlikely thing to spring from life-bearing planets was intelligent self-awareness. It was a constant marvel how the species that exhibited sentience appeared for the most part to be of roughly the same physical configuration, and none of them unrecognisable to the others as intelligent beings, even though the wide variety of environments that spawned intelligent life should have resulted in grossly different forms. Had gods indeed roamed the universe at one time or another and created the rules and laws that shaped life? Or was life expressing some basic urge for the great system of the universe to explore itself?