The Sakkara

by Donald Nicklas

  “I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere just looking at it. Let’s suit up and see if we can get into that thing.”

  Christopher, Alaya, Tavia, and the serpents Hatch, Blue Scale and Deadeye would explore the object. Raul Cortega would stay aboard and maintain communication with the Tempestas.

  “Raul, put me through to the ship.”

  “The line is open, Captain.”

  “Paul, we are about to explore the object. I will have Raul keep the line open, so you can see what we see and hear what’s happening.”

  “Understood, Captain. Good luck.”

  Those leaving the ship went to the bottom deck of the corvette into a large prep room containing hard vacuum suits, for both humans and serpents. They suited up and took a toolbox along to break into the object if needed. When all was ready, they checked that there was two hours of life support in each suit. They entered the airlock and evacuated it. They then opened the outer hatch and left the ship. The surface of the planet was hard ice, covered in cosmic dust and organic material. As they walked to the object, they stirred up the dust and it began to cover the lower part of their suits. Gravity was light and they had to be careful not to move too fast or their movements would be exaggerated. They covered the distance from the ship to the object in just less than ten minutes. The Mary Rose cast an intense light onto the object and Slone walked up to it and brushed some of the dust off. Underneath the object was metallic with a bright, silver color.

  “Well, this is definitely not a natural object. We need to see if there is a hatch anywhere,” Slone said.

  The group split up and walked in opposite directions around the ship. After a period of searching, Deadeye said, “Sss. Captain, there is a hatch here.”

  The rest of the group went over to where Deadeye was standing and saw she had uncovered the outline of a hatch. They worked to remove all of the dust covering the hatch until it was fully exposed. They were then confronted with a hatch that was flush with the surrounding structure. Since they assumed this was a ship of some kind, they began to use the terms associated with ships. On the hull, next to the hatch there was a circular keypad with a flat surface and symbols on the edge of the circle. When Slone saw the symbols, his heart almost missed a beat. “Alaya, look at those symbols.”

  Alaya went over and looked closely at them. “They look familiar. We have seen these before.”

  “Indeed we have. Those are the symbols of the aliens in Andromeda your father called the Saltic,” Slone pointed out.

  Alaya was dumbstruck. It had been more than a decade since she saw those symbols, but now that Christopher pointed them out to her, she recognized them from the file on the computer core she recovered from the methane moon in Andromeda.

  Slone moved a bit away from the ship and looked at its shape. “We saw ships like this in the hanger the Hayden was in.”

  Alaya moved back and joined her husband. She realized he was right this was a Saltic ship. However, what was its relationship to the Sakkara?

  “Tempestas, are you seeing this?”

  Tom Gardner had been watching the feed from the team’s helmets. He too recognized the symbols when he saw them, since all who had been on the ill-fated mission had seen the file. “We all see them, Captain. Be careful when you enter.”

  “Roger that,” Slone then turned to Tavia. “Tavia, pull a tap node out of the tool kit and see if it can read the circuits.”

  “Yes, Captain. But I am not sure they are still working if this has been here for eight centuries.” She placed the tap node over the circular control and turned it on. To the group’s surprise, it read electrical activity. “Captain, I am reading electrical activity in the ship. It is weak but there may be enough to open the hatch.”

  “See what you can do. I would rather not damage it if we can help it.”

  The tap node finished its work and then projected the results in a holographic schematic in the space above the node. Tavia looked at it and saw something unusual. “Captain, the external portion of the lock may be alien, but the mechanism itself is wired by humans. It looks like they repurposed the lock to work with human electronics. The node also went deep into the workings of the electrical system that was still working and discovered that this ship is a blend of alien and human electronics.”

  Alaya remarked, to no one in particular, “This keeps getting more curious as we proceed.”

  “Tavia, can you open the hatch?” Slone asked.

  “I think so; let me see if this will work.” Tavia pressed the button on the tap node three times and the node began to work on the electronics of the lock. “Captain, the node says the hatch is unlocked, but there is not enough electricity for it to open. We will have to pry it open.”

  Blue Scale pulled a pry bar from her tool kit and wedged it between the hatch and the hull. She then pushed on the bar to pry the door away from the hull. Serpents muscle structure made them much stronger than humans, though they were the same size. Once the hatch was open a bit, Blue Scale placed her hands inside and slid the hatch open to reveal an airlock. The team entered and Tavia took a reading of the ship on the opposite side of the interior door.

  “Captain, the interior is not pressurized. We can open the inner door without cycling the airlock.”

  “A good thing,” Alaya said. “We don’t have the power to cycle it.”

  Blue Scale repeated her actions on the inner door and it was pushed open. The group then entered the ship and shined their helmet lights into the area. They found themselves in a large hold containing a strange object that none of them could recognize. It was not natural and had a panel with lights and controls. None of it was working and the object appeared as cold as everything else in the ship did.

  “Tavia, take Blue Scale and Hatch and see if you can find the engine room. The rest of us will look for the bridge,” Slone ordered. Christopher, Alaya and Deadeye moved forward on the ship. As they shined their lights through the darkness, they passed down a corridor with doors on either side. Alaya could not help looking through the windows as they passed each door. Most appeared to be crew quarters but there was no evidence of a crew. The furnishings were strange to look at and obviously made for aliens with very different body structures. One room looked like it was furnished for a human. Alaya told the others to wait and she tested the door. To her surprise, it opened. She went in and discovered the room was indeed set up for human occupation. However, who could have been dealing with the Saltic. They used human brains for computers. As she examined a desk in the room, she saw some old style photographs with the same young woman in all of them with various people who looked to be members of her family. There was nothing else to find and the group moved on. As they moved out of the small crew area, Tavia called from the aft portion of the ship.

  “Alaya, we arrived in the engine room but there is nothing here we recognize as an engine.”

  “Very well, Tavia. Come forward and join us.”

  “On our way.”

  The group passed a door and Christopher could swear he saw a light through the door window. He signaled a halt, went over to the door, and found it unlocked. He slid it into the wall and the group entered. What Slone thought was a light turned out to be an electronic glow coming from a control panel. Normally this would not be visible, but there was absolute darkness on the planet. The temperature was also just three degrees above absolute zero. Slone looked at the outside temperature reading on his helmet HUD and read minus 270 degrees Celsius. At that temperature, even the slightest energy would throw off heat and light. They walked over to the source of the glow and found it was coming from an ice covered stasis chamber. They were in some kind of sickbay with ten stasis chambers, but only one seemed to have electrical activity. Slone went over to the small window in the lid of the chamber and looked through but it was so covered in ice, he could only make out that someone or something was inside. Just then, Tavia and the others arrived.

  “Tavia, take a reading of this chamber.
”

  Tavia pulled out a tap node and placed it on the electrical panel. The node probed the inner workings and projected its findings. “Captain, there is someone inside. The node cannot be sure if it is a human, but whoever it is, they are in stasis.”

  “Could they still be alive after eight centuries?”

  “The node cannot tell us how long they have been in stasis or if they can be revived. I will have to defer to Dr. Tirpak.” The doctor had been transferred to the Tempestas from the Invicta at Slone’s request.

  “Ok let’s leave this for later and find the bridge.”

  They continued and finally reached the front of the ship. There was only one chair on the bridge, though there was room for several more. Slone sat in the chair and saw that all of the controls needed to control the ship were at his command. The chair and the consoles were all designed for humans. He brushed ice off some of the consoles and saw that the controls were marked in human standard language.

  “This ship has been modified for human control. I am not sure any Saltic were aboard her,” Slone pointed out.

  He then pressed the button marked navigation and nothing happened. He was not sure what he thought would happen after eight centuries. “Let’s get back to the ship and figure out how to get this alien vessel onto the Tempestas and see if there is anything we can do with the person in stasis.”

  The group left and returned to the Mary Rose and flew back to the Tempestas. The bridge crew had watched the exploration and was already discussing how to bring the ship up. Slone discussed the problem with Diana Gardner concerning the engineering challenge and Dr. Tirpak concerning the human in stasis. The doctor thought it would be best to leave everything concerning the stasis chamber alone until the ship was aboard the Tempestas. Since it was the size of a serpent ship, there was room to bring it onto the flight deck. Diana and her engineering crew put themselves on the task and worked out a way to raise the ship off the planet. They would weld four loops onto the ship and then attach cables to it and four serpent ships. The ships would then make the cables taut and slowly raise the ship off the surface. Once it was clear of the ice, they could move it easily through space and bring it near the battleship. All but one of the ships would then detach and a group of serpents in space suits with jet packs would act as tugs to push the ship into the flight deck hangar. The attached serpent ship would make sure that it could be controlled as it was pushed in. Slone approved the plan and Diana went down with a mix of serpent and human engineering techs. The loops were welded on with a special mixture of thermite and metal. The termite burned hot with attached oxygen and melted the metal between the loops and the ship hull. The loops were firmly welded onto the alien vessel. Diana then called down four serpent ships with cables that were attached to the four loops. Once the slack was taken up, Diana ordered the ships to pull in unison and nothing happened. The ships did not move and the cables were strained but the alien vessel was still on the planet. Diana called a halt, checked on the alien ship, and realized there were projections from the ship that were frozen in the underlying ice.

  Slone contacted Diana, “What is the problem lifting the ship?”

  “It looks like the landing gear is out and it must have melted into the ice when the ship landed and now it is encased. We will have to use thermite to melt it and then pull the ship out fast.”

  “Ok, whatever you have to do. The sooner we get it aboard, the faster we can return to our home.”

  Diana had her engineers set oxygenated thermite charges. This was going to be a tricky maneuver. The thermite burned hot enough to melt through the hull of the ship. To prevent this, they would have to pull the alien ship out of the ice as soon as it melts and before the hull is affected. When all was set, Diana gave the order and the thermite charges were activated. The ice melted quickly, Diana ordered the serpent ships to pull, and the alien vessel came free and began to rise off the planet. The rest of the recovery went well and it was safely stowed onto the flight deck. The serpent ships then landed and the shuttle that had brought the engineering crew down to the surface brought them back. When all were safely aboard, Slone turned to Paul McMann.

  “Paul, take us back to the marker buoy at the slipstream.”

  “Yes captain.”

  The Tempestas pull away from the rogue planet and she moved to the marker. The only problem from the point of view of Slone was the fact that they were still not sure if this was the Sakkara. “Paul, you have the con,” Slone said and turned the captain’s chair over to his navigator.

  Chapter 3 - The Sakkara

  Slone went down the ramp at the rear of the bridge, past the officers’ quarters and then entered the flight deck. He walked over to the alien vessel and saw that the techs were already cleaning the dust off the ship. As more of the ship’s hull became visible, Slone could see the metal looked like the silver colored metal of the large Saltic ship that had swallowed the Hayden. It was an interesting design, consisting of an oblong fuselage with squared front and back. There was no streamlining and none of the elegance of either human or serpent ships. To be honest, to Slone it looked more like a cargo container than a ship. However, with no resistance in space, a ship could have any shape. There were also no sail collars and that reminded Slone of the alien vessel in Andromeda which came out of the slipstream with no apparent sails. How did this ship sail the slipstreams?

  Dr. Tirpak and her medical techs went aboard as soon as the ship was brought in, to check on the stasis chamber. Fortunately, they discovered the chamber was running on very low energy from a self-contained nuclear power source. It was also a human designed chamber and they could bring it out and hook it up to the ship’s power in the sickbay. This was done and the chamber was powered up to full. At that time, it was discovered that the chamber was still functioning to preserve the stasis of the individual within.

  The Slones were watching as more of the ship was cleared off and finally a name appeared. It was on a plaque that appeared to have been attached to the vessel by humans. On the plaque was only one word, Sakkara. They had accomplished their mission and it was time to head home. It would take a little over a month to return to the slipstream, and then they could finally deliver the ship they were sent to find, after a year and a half of searching and still a ten-month journey home. Captain Shegai was standing with the Slones.

  “So this is what all this is about. I have spent almost three years of my life now from the time we first discovered that signal until now. That oblong better be worth it.”

  Alaya looked at the captain and agreed. “I’m with you, Arabella, this better be worth it. Problem is, it is alien and we have dealt with those aliens before. It was a disaster.”

  The Slones filled Captain Shegai in on the ill-fated voyage of the Hayden. She then responded, “But if you’re right, that ship would suggest there was contact with Andromeda eight centuries ago.”

  “That’s what worries me. We have never heard anything about it, so where did this ship come from?” Slone pointed out. “Perhaps our unexpected guest can tell us.”

  The Slones and Captain Shegai left the flight deck and headed into the center of the ship where sickbay was located next to the children’s section. They entered the sickbay area and saw Dr. Tirpak and her med techs working on the stasis chamber. They watched them for a few minutes.

  “Doctor, how is our patient doing?”

  Dr. Tirpak and her techs snapped to attention and saluted. Slone returned the salute and told them to carry on. The doctor then responded to the question, “I have no idea how she is doing. I have never been confronted with someone who has been in stasis for eight centuries. I doubt anyone ever has.”

  Alaya then said, “May I ask how you plan to approach this then?”

  “There is nothing in our protocols to deal with this. The stasis chamber is definitely of the type used eight centuries ago, though it is unusual for them to have their own nuclear generator. It’s almost as if they expected the stasis to last a lon
g time. The only way we can approach this is to bring her slowly out of stasis, similar to how we would bring anyone out of stasis. Since it appears they expected prolonged stasis, they must have expected the revival to be in the usual manner.”

  “Let me know if you are able to revive the occupant. We have a lot of questions,” Slone pointed out.

  “Yes, captain. I expect to have her out of stasis within 12 hours. What I have no idea about is what kind of stasis sickness eight centuries causes.”

  “We will leave you to your task then.”

  During the following day cycle, the Slones checked on the progress in reviving the ship’s occupant. They were told she was now out of stasis but still unconscious. The Slones dressed and went to the flight deck. Alaya wanted to make sure her ship was all locked down for the journey home and they both wanted to check on progress with the Sakkara. Diana Gardner and her engineering techs were literally crawling over the alien ship. Christopher went over to her and asked how it was coming.

  “Captain, this ship is a wonder of technology. She was not controlled by a brain, as the alien ships we encountered in Andromeda, but she is more advanced than anything we have. The electronics alone are light-years ahead of us.”

  “Diana,” Alaya asked. “How does this ship travel the slipstreams? I don’t see any sail rings or anything that could hold a sail, for that matter. The surface is smooth in all areas. Even the entrance hatch is flush with the surrounding surface.”