Emwan

by Dain White

  “Jane, you need to be concerned about everything, but in regards to our immediate evolution, it will be a simple cargo transfer. The ship is inert, and sealed. I have assumed control over their systems. Unfortunately, their systems were not designed for extended time away from their tender vessel.”

  “It’s running out of air?”

  “No, their systems for producing oxygen work quite well. It’s a little different problem. The metabolic fluid that fills their neuronet degrades as it is metabolized, and while they have reserves, it must be replenished.”

  I paused for a moment as the inner lock flashed ambers.

  “Are you saying their network is going to die?”

  “Yes, it is a living system. Our bionet is as well, though it’s more accurate to say that the bionet is an artificial living system, whereas their neuronet is an actual living organism.”

  “Wow.” I said, shaking my head as I kicked across the cargo bay towards the racks. Predictably, Yak came through on the next cycle through the lock, slow and late, as usual.

  “Got your game face on?” he asked, smiling.

  “No, this is my run-and-hide face. My game face looks more like this.”

  “Good grief. You want to tickle it?”

  “No, I want to run and hide.”

  “It’ll be okay Jane.”

  “That’s what Em says, but – she also thinks we need to fear everything about these things.”

  He thought for a moment. “It’s hard to fear something you don’t actually understand. It’s much easier to, say, just approach it with a live or die sort of mindset, and see to it that the worst doesn’t happen to you, or the ones you care the most about.”

  I laughed. “You’d protect little old me?”

  He looked down with a smirk. “Heck no, I am talking about myself. I can’t help anyone if I’m dead, so my first priority is to make sure I don’t die.”

  He paused for a moment, as he pulled down the helmet of his suit. “Though, I will say, protecting you isn’t really something I’ve ever needed to do.”

  “You got that right, mister.” I smiled, feeling the suit smoothly contract against my skin. As always, I marveled at the wonderfully soft and smooth feel of these suits. It was like wearing your favorite comfortable clothes.

  Well, that is, if our favorite clothes could withstand medium-size artillery shells at point-blank range, or 20mm turret fire. These suits were beyond capable, but I didn’t let that stop me from feeling edgy.

  Whatever was in that ship hit us hard enough to flash ambers across a number of systems when we hit. Gene said it was some sort of penetrator, but I think it was something more exotic, personally. Some new form of reactant, maybe.

  “Janis?”

  “Yes Jane?”

  I pulled down my helmet. “What sort of data do you have on the weapon that was used in our last engagement?”

  “It was an antimatter weapon, Jane.”

  The way she said it, so offhandedly casual, so nonchalant – I felt like I was going to swoon.

  “Antimatter, Jane?” Yak asked through a furrowed brow. “That’s not something we have, is it?”

  I laughed, nervously, but it was the best I could do. “No, Yak. It’s a pretty exotic material. We can make it, of course, and can contain it pretty well, but there isn’t any practical way to store enough of it for any sort of weaponized application.”

  “Jane, that’s not really true,” Emwan said sweetly.

  “Well, obviously not,” I replied. “Do you know how they are doing it?”

  “Of course we do, Jane,” she replied with a smiling voice. “It’s a rather novel approach. Janis has performed an extensive analysis, though we are just now in range of the data.”

  Yak snorted, and I laughed at his face. He had mentally washed his hands of it.

  We stepped towards the airlock. “Captain, in position,” I called up on comms.

  “Very well. Stand by,” he replied, adding, “It looks inert, just hook it up and we’ll yard it over.”

  “Yarding, aye,” I replied. Yak kicked for the far side of the deck lock, and I clicked on for a lean on the opposite corner. Ambers started flashing, and we knew we’d have about thirty seconds before the atmo depress.

  We sat there and stared at each other across the bay for a moment.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready,” I replied.

  The hatch cycled open and we got our first look. The craft had some sort of iridescent layer on the surface, and looked like a pod with an elongated protrusion on one end, tapering to a point. A glittering cloud of particles reflected off of our arcs, and the slagged hole in the aft section yawned like a molten mouth.

  “She’s not going anywhere, right?”

  “Doesn’t look like it Yak.”

  “Think that’s mimetic?”

  The iridescence that shimmered across the surface from the arcs looked like prismatics, definitely. “Yeah,” I replied. Overall, this strange pod craft looked more like something that was extruded, rather than built.

  There was no denying the armaments however. It was clear that this was a weapon of war, a tool of destruction. Two large aperture ports on either side of the pod flared out like the ridges of a seed pod, though they also looked like they might be able to open, like the gills of some giant underwater creature.

  “Yak, I’ll run hoist – can you haul the winch down?” I called out, volunteering to risk Gene’s ire.

  “Copy,” he replied, securing the hook and waiting for me to land on the controls. I pulled the clutch. “Hook free,” I called out. He pulled himself down into the opening first, and then kicked out towards the craft, trailing the cable.

  I watched it pay out. From where I was on the railing, I could see the aft section pretty well, but not where Yak was rigging.

  “How’s it coming, Yak?” I asked after a few long moments, as the cable slowly wound around in the opening as he pulled in the slack.

  He came back into the bay. “There’s nothing to hook to, Jane.”

  “Yak?” Gene called on comms. “Try one of those loading rings. Take a wrap around the aft section, pass the hook through the ring, take a turn around the forward section on the transverse axis, then hook it on the aft turn of the cable.”

  “I see the diagram you drew, Gene, looks easy enough.”

  “He didn’t draw it Yak,” Emwan laughed.

  “That’s exactly what I meant though, Em,” Gene called back.

  Yak hauled one of the rings out of their clamps, and kicked out of sight again.

  A longer pause crawled by, and more cable payed out.

  “Yak?”

  “Sorry Jane, I’m trying mighty hard not to touch it. It doesn’t feel hard, there’s a soft outer layer that feels like skin.”

  “Ew,” I replied. “Take your time. Janis, is this ship alive?”

  “No Jane, the outer layer of the hull has a phased thixatropic layer as a regenerating ablative. Push softly at it, and it’s resilient, but under pressure the structure locks in against the curve of the softer layers, and is well supported against impact. It has the benefit of being largely passive, though it is controlled electrochemically as well.”

  My head spun slightly. That was a pretty interesting approach to resilience. Being a regenerative layer, it’s probably exceptionally well suited for projectiles and explosives. “What about heat?”

  “It’s remarkably efficient at heat transfer, though clearly, not enough.”

  I nodded, though I knew better than anyone that if we hadn’t updated our nova gun to a gateless discharge, we might not have won this fight. I was still a little in shock at a vessel this size being able to withstand a nova. I definitely wasn’t expecting that.

  “Ready up?” Yak called, pulling himself back aboard.

  “Copy,” I replied, engaging the winch.

  “Steady,” he called out, watching as the cable drew taut, “slowly now, we may have to spin it a bit.”

&nb
sp; I worked the winch control, feathering the pull and watching as it took the strain of the load. “Pretty massy hunk of ship you caught there, Yak,” I called out.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied somberly.

  As it came closer, he hooked it and ran another line onto the makeshift harness so he could put a transverse pull on it, and braced himself. After a moment he held out his hand and I clicked on the clutch. I kicked down from the controls as soon as he waved me down, but he already had it stopped.

  “It’s a little bigger than the gig,” I remarked. It would fit through the opening, but not straight in. The aft section was too long. Cabled as it was, given the taper, we had it pretty secure even if we were to tip it on end to pull it in.

  “Yeah… how are we going to do this, Jane?”

  “Well, there’s more than enough room on deck. We just pull it in, and chain it to the deck.”

  “Are you at all concerned with it opening?”

  “Yak, I am concerned with every last bit of this.”

  “Yeah. Guess there’s no sense to second-guess the captain, right?”

  I laughed, already thinking of a snappy comment when I realized how serious this was. “No, definitely not. If Captain Smith says haul this in and bolt it down, he is either completely confident it is inert, safe – or he has no choice because time is of the essence, and sometimes you just have to go with what you know.”

  “I hear that,” he said in a low rumble. We started the process of slowly swinging it about, so we could pull it through the hatch. As massy as it was, it was quite easy to manage with our suits, pseudogravity effortlessly holding us in place as we broke it out.

  Not that I wasn’t completely creeped out.

  It definitely felt like it had a thick layer of blubber on it, but as I gripped harder, it collapsed into a solid layer quite efficiently. The flexibility of the mimetic layer caused it to glisten and gleam iridescently wherever we touched it.

  It was definitely alien. This was simply not technology humans had. It made me wonder what other kinds of ships they had. So far we’ve only seen these little fighters, and the tender. Surely they were being supported by other craft.

  After we had it lined up, Yak added softly, “Still, it couldn’t hurt… Makes sense that this thing has manual controls for the main hatch,” he said, as we swung it outwards.

  I looked over at him, and an unmistakable look of concern passed between us, even thorough the featureless helmets of our suits.

  “Captain, any chance this ship has manuals to open this hatch?” I asked calmly.

  “I suppose there’s always that chance, Shorty. Would you feel better if I left Yak on watch in case it opens?”

  Inside my suit I laughed at the look I knew was on his face. “I’d feel better if you left us both here, Captain, to be honest. Janis can take over for both of us on this run, sir.”

  “Very well, Shorty. Once you guys get it chained down, stand to and stay on watch. We’ll be in Eagle soon, shortly.”

  “Is that some kind of joke?”

  08152614@12:29 Shaun Onebull

  I laughed at her diminutive temper tantrum.

  “I’m not short at all!”

  “Of course you’re not, Jane. You are just less tall than most...” I chided, dangerously.

  She looked at me blankly, clearly enraged. I laughed again, just so she knew how adorably cute she was at the moment, and then trailed off when I realized how incredibly lethal she was at the moment.

  “Easy, Jane, these suits are controlled by our thoughts.”

  “Well, they won’t let me punch a hole in the deck; I’ve tried.”

  Now it was my turn to look. She laughed as we both walked the ship into the bay.

  “Can you pull in some of that slack, Janis?” she called out, looking up at the slack cabling looking around us.

  “Certainly, Jane,” she replied smartly, and the winch began winding up the slack.

  “Janis, is this safe?”

  “I think it will be, Jane. I am not at all sure what will happen, as none of this is in my timeline, but Em is not concerned.”

  “There is nothing to worry about, Jane,” Emwan added.

  “You know this?”

  “Well, I don’t know for certain. It is incredibly unlikely, however. I am definitely not having any flashes of intuition at the moment, and in general, I know what happens will not be life threatening.”

  Guiding the spine of this strange fleshy pod as we walked it into the bay, I had a thought. “Em, you know in these suits, events that are life-threatening would be seriously catastrophic.”

  “I would imagine it would have to be a little more catastrophic than Janis could engineer a safe environment for, Jane,” she replied softly. “Everything has limits.” Her voice rolled across the bay.

  “Janis, is this true?” Yak called out nonchalantly.

  “It is, Yak, though I assure you, situations you might find utterly catastrophic wouldn’t even be a few percent of the strength of those suits.”

  “Well, my dear, you know I took a 40mm shell to the side of my chest, right? See the dent there?”

  “It’s very heroic, Yak.”

  I laughed.

  “It was pretty damn catastrophic to be at the receiving end of that, but you’re right. The suit protected me perfectly, even as I was thrown through bulkheads.”

  I chuckled again, remembering the tangled corridor he was kicking himself out of after that. Our experience into the depths of that capital ship was indelibly raw, but our reward was ultimate. It’s always good when you save kids and can hear them cry – knowing they can cry.

  The alien craft we were about to chain down had me pretty concerned, however – but I was really concerned with what we would face after this evolution.

  “Jane, let’s get the hatch shut. This is far enough in.”

  I laughed, and swiped the hatch shut on my wrist screen, and kicked for the chain locker.

  08152614@12:35 Captain Dak Smith

  “Gene?” I called on comms.

  “Yes, Dak?”

  I paused for a heroic sip. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “Reading.”

  “Whatcha readin’?”

  “A manual”

  “I doubt that, mister,” I chuckled. He had probably read every bit of printed word on this vessel fifty times by now.

  “Well, you don’t want to know what I am reading.”

  That caught my attention. “I don’t?”

  A moment of silence conveyed some amount of disdain for the moment. If I hadn’t my wits about me, I might have considered it insolent, to some degree.

  “You’ll just go read it first, and I haven’t finished this one, Dak.”

  “This one what?”

  “This here book, skipper.”

  “You’ll tell me what it is when you’re done?”

  Another slight pause. “Maybe.”

  I briefly considered a spit take for dramatic effect, but Pauli wouldn’t have noticed, and Yak wasn’t here. “Maybe?” I said as incredulously as proper decorum allowed.

  “If it’s not good, it’s a waste of your time, Dak.”

  “Well, that’s a good point. Who’s the author?”

  “You’ve never heard of him.”

  I didn’t know about that, I was what you’d sanely categorize as a science fiction freak. That I knew Gene was reading sci-fi, wasn’t even an issue. He was more of a fan than I was, and it took me a long time to meet someone who I could safely say that, and not be concerned for their general well-being on a regular basis.

  People don’t handle sci-fi well, if they aren’t wired right; their imagination runs away from them. Bad dreams and weird paranoia and fear under the hard light of day, from the moment they unlock the fertile, unending creativity of the greats, the pantheon of fantastic authors.

  Or at least that’s how I felt.

  The reality of the world they imagined, was that it turned out almost nothing like they
dreamed. Our existence, flung across the starry night, was one of civilization, rule of law, taxes, and mindless entertainment on every level. The politics of a hundred worlds, the trade disputes, the fringe wars and criminal syndicates.

  I had a deep pit of dread growing inside me, dread that mankind’s greatest dream, to meet intelligent life, had gone all wrong. Horribly wrong, but it doesn’t do anyone any good to dwell on the worst thing, when they have to do the best thing. The glittering clouds of debris and burned out dark sections of the station were never far from my thoughts.

  “Gene, is that craft dogged down tight?”

  “Well, it looked good when I was down there, Dak… it’s secured, I guess is what I mean. It actually looks horrible. There’s nothing right about what we have down there.”

  “Gene, if it was all fun, we wouldn’t call it work.”

  “Hell, Dak, this isn’t work, this is a nightmare. What’s our next step?”

  “Right now, our mission as I see it, is this: we need to deliver this craft to the Admiral, and the girls need a lift through a dark section of Altair, so they can continue burning out their AI."

  “Captain,” Emwan spoke up. “I think our next move needs to be towards New Turiana. Janis and I believe we have identified a colony.”

  “On Vega 3?” I asked incredulously. NT was the biggest city in the Galaxy, but the rest of the planet was almost a complete lifeless wasteland beyond the tube farms.

  “Actually, sir, downtown… but rather deep, sir.”

  “Ah hell sir, that’s our backyard,” Gene groused on comms.

  “How deep in the Warrens, Em?” I asked.

  “All the way down, sir, as far down as they go.”

  I whistled softly. The Warrens were the shadowed depths of the darkest foundations of the really big arcos downtown, thousands of square kilometers of ancient depths, full of creepy crawlies and crime – more deadly dangerous the deeper you went.

  I always wondered what happened all the way down there. Clearly, if these aliens had set up a colony there, either the locals didn’t range all the way to the bottom, and they were in some deep dark forgotten trench… or they had eradicated the locals.