“Good, let’s get off this rock. Chief, power up the engines.”
Captain Cook couldn’t recall the last time she had heard the engines start. Every time she boarded, whether it was after a long shore leave, or after it had been repaired, the hum of the engines was a reassuring constant. Hearing the powerful behemoth come on line filled her soul with joy. They were the heartbeat of the ship, the sound she heard when she went to bed, the sound she heard when she woke up in the morning, the sound she missed when she was away, and the sound she would long for when she retired. It was beautiful.
The engines not only provided the thrust to get the Arwen moving it always produced power. One by one the systems were taken off emergency power and placed on main power. The working screens around Marjorie blinked off for a second while the switch took place then came on just as quickly. With a few swipes of her finger on her main screen she could move the external camera images to other screens, giving her a panoramic view over the ocean. “Communications, let me talk to the ship.” After a moment it was ready. “Arwen crew, this is Captain Cook. We’re about ready to take off. When we get into orbit I’ll be sure to order the gravity plates lowered so we can enjoy the feeling of low gravity for a change. Captain Cook, out.”
She paused, waiting for the computer in front of her to report the engines were ready. Once they were she gave the order. “Chief, full thrust to the engines.”
The whine of the engine reverberated through the walls as the ion engines reached full power. The ship moved forward slowly before picking up momentum. The dart shaped Arwen moved easily through the water at first.
An ear-piercing screech, the sound of metal being torn apart, sent a chill down Captain Cook’s spine. At first, it was simply one sound, but soon it was joined by several other ear piercing shrikes followed by loud popping noises. Bolts snapping apart.
“Report!”
“The ship is overstressed,” The Commander yelled over the sounds of the ship being torn apart. “We can’t take much more of this!”
A loud snap, a sound she had never heard from the Arwen or any other ship, caused her ears to ring. To her surprised Captain Cook felt lighter for a few seconds. It took her a moment to realize that was because the Arwen had lurched downward. “What’s going on?”
“It’s almost as if something is pulling us down.” The Commander replied and for the first time she could hear the stress in his voice. “Our shields are collapsing!”
Captain Cook looked at the shield indicator and saw they were at 5 percent. There was another snap, more ears ringing, and then the shields fell.
Without the extra buoyancy the Arwen was at the mercy of the planet. It sank rapidly, heading down deeper into an endless ocean.
Weakened seams split and water burst over the ship, ripping through bulkheads and walls like a blow torch through tissue paper. Anyone caught in the path of the raging waters were instantly vaporized, the surviving body parts cared away with the rest of the debris. Water at that pressure behaved more like an indestructible wall moving at hundreds of miles per hour, destroying everything in its path.
The water continued to rush into the Arwen, plowing through the thick bulkheads, carrying heavy walls, smashing equipment and any unlucky crew with it. The only thing slowing it down was the debris it carried, debris, which clogged up hallways and doors, slowing the flow enough to stop the destruction.
Captain Cook saw it all on her screen. The destroyed sections were blank, the sensors in those areas destroyed. Water flooded nearly one-third of the ship, mostly in the outer sections which housed crew and recreation area. People had died; she wouldn’t know how many for a while but there were people stationed in the affected areas.
“Chief, can you give me any kind of report?” She asked through her communication station.
“Things are wet and damp,” he said, “and we could lose another section at any moment. Captain, we are way past any tested tolerance for this class of ship. With shields we could go to the deepest part of any ocean on Earth. Without shields it would be an iffy proposition. In this situation I can’t even guess how long we’ll last.”
“Commander,” she turned to her second, “are we still sinking?”
“Yes, but not as quickly as I would have thought. However, if we keep going down the pressures will become too much for the hull to tolerate, and we will be crushed. I’ll be honest; I'm surprised it hasn’t happened yet.”
“Stop the engines, stop the accent. I don’t want to rip the ship apart.”
The engines powered down to the lowest level, enough to keep the electronics going and nothing else. Right away the stressed sounds of the ship ceases. The ship continued to grown as the water all around it tried to crush the hull.
“We’ll sit tight for a while. Commander, get me a damage report I want to know what we have to work with for our next attempt.”
******
Doctor Fran Lipton sat with a loud frump onto her chair. She was trying to reconfigure the scanners to work under water and the pain through her back from standing for more than ten minutes was too much and she needed to rest. Sitting down did little to help but even a little was a relief. Her head felt as if it wanted to fall down. It was a constant effort just to keep it from tilting onto her shoulder or falling into her chest. If the ocean didn’t kill her the gravity surely would.
In front of her was water from the ocean. She had managed to get it after shields fell. It was a touchy subject to preach with one of the engineer crews but, now that large sections of the ship were flooded, getting a sample wasn’t difficult and once she explained a sample might help them escape they managed to get her a bucket of water, way more than what she needed.
She placed the sample inside the ships scanner then activated the sensors.
She slowly rolled her chair over to another computer screen and looked at the sample. Her fingers gingerly typed on a keyboard, one had broken when her hands slammed down on it as she attempted to type. Her fingers were sore and she thought she may have a broken pinky. She ignored the pain and tried to concentrate on the images that appeared in front of her.
It was clear the moment she saw it magnified the water wasn’t normal. At first, she thought the murkiness of the water had something to do with pollution or dead plant life. The scans of the planet didn’t find anything living in the water but, from what she saw, the scans were wrong.
Transparent cobalt strings floated in the water. The strings were everywhere. They were delicate creatures, beautiful even. They danced in the water, overlapping each other, forming complex knots. She asked the computer to pull up a three-dimensional image. The splendor made her gasp. In the small sample she had she could see hundreds of the string creatures interlaced with each other. It was a dance, maybe a mating ritual, she couldn’t tell, but she really wanted to. Life like this was something beyond her understanding, and she wanted to understand it.
From behind her she heard a snap and it caused her to quickly turn, a move she regretted as her head tried its best to fall from her body. She closed her eyes to the blinding pain that would only get worse.
Sparks shot out of the bucket of water the men left her. It reminded her of when she had accidentally touched two live wires from a fray cord together. The resulting sparking nearly burnt down her bedroom and probably would have if the short circuit hadn’t blown the power in her house out. Her dad was angry but what could he do with a curious girl who wanted to know how things worked in his house? On a hunch, she pulled out a meter and placed it into the bucket. The electronic display on the meter showed a very strong electrical charge. Was the ocean electrified?
How did that happen? How deep was this planet and could she use this information to help them escape? She had to get more information. She walked over to the wall communicator and said, “Captain Cook, this is Doctor Lipton.”
“Go ahead doctor.”
“I think I found something useful, but I can’t be sure just yet. Can I use the ho
logram room and have access to all the ship’s external sensors?”
“Of course. I’ll have the Commander assist you in operating the hologram room.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll meet him there as soon as I can drag myself to the room. Doctor Lipton, out.”
*****
Commander Pippleton felt fine. In fact, he felt better than he had in many years. He had no idea the added gravity would make him stronger. He had no idea how weak everyone was while he was still strong, still able to move about. He knew the Ulliam were stronger than humans, but he had no idea by how much.
He stood outside of the hologram room for the better part of ten minutes waiting for Doctor Lipton to arrive. He knew of the history between Doctor Lipton and Captain Cook, he was there when she ordered Captain Lipton’s ship into the battle, he was the one to give her the news of its destruction. He never saw the Captain flinch; her strength in that battle was an inspiration to everyone. It was only afterwards, when the peace treaties were signed, when the parades had stopped, when everything was peaceful, that he saw the first signs of how that battle had affected her. She would leave him in command of the bridge for prolonged periods of time while she stayed in her room. When she was on the bridge, she would sit on her chair nearly lifeless, giving orders in a monotone, almost bored voice. This lasted for the better part of a year. It wasn’t until the first anniversary of the battle and a returned trip to Earth did she start to recover. He didn’t know what happened but when she returned she seemed to be in control again, confident and willing to take the risks needed to be a Captain.
He saw the Doctor shuffling her feet down the hallway. Doctor Lipton leaned against the wall and looked as if she were going to fall. The Commander ran over and grabbed her, supporting her extra weight against his very large shoulder.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I will help you to the room.” He replied and the two continued toward the front of the door.
“I work out almost every day,” she said. “I thought I was stronger than this.”
“I think you’re doing fine,” he said encouragingly.
“You’re not having a problem. What’s your secret?”
“You need to be born an Ulliam,” he replied with a playful shrug. He opened the door and they walked in. “What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to work the controls. I’ve only read part of the manual for this thing, and I’m not sure what I can and can’t do.”
“I’ve been trained extensively on it so I can help. Do you wish me to get you a chair? I don’t mind standing.”
“Thank you, yes.”
He walked over to small computer consul and pulled out the chair. “I don’t know what to call you,” she said. “I know everyone calls you Commander, but I don’t feel comfortable calling you that.”
“You can call me whatever you’d like.” He replied placing the chair behind her. “You’re not military so you don’t need to call me Commander Pippleton.”
“It’s odd you guys only have one name. Calling you Pippleton just seems strange.” She sat in the chair he had pushed up behind her.
“It’s my name,” he replied walking back over to the machine.
“Okay, Pippleton, here is what I need. Can you show me a real time scan of the surrounding ocean?”
The room darkened. Moments later the two of them were standing in the middle of a vast ocean. Commander Pippleton shuffled his feet, feeling a bit uneasy to actually see how much water was around them. Ulliam didn’t have any oceans, and this view was completely foreign to him.
The water had a murky haze to it. It was as if they were looking out of a thick smoke glass window. Small particles of debris, most likely pieces of the Arwen’s skin, floated around them.
Doctor Lipton looked around inquisitively. “Okay, this is interesting,” she said. “Can we scan it the different wave lengths?”
“I can scan it throughout the entire spectrum.”
She nodded. “Okay, let’s do that.”
Commander Pippleton moved his fingers across the screen ordering the Arwen computer to scan the ocean in different wave lengths. Most showed nothing, the inferred was interesting in it showed faint lines overlapping each other. Fran asked him to store those findings before moving on. It wasn’t until they reached the electromagnetic part of the spectrum that they saw something that lit the room from total darkness to a nearly blinding glow.
“Oh my god,” Doctor Lipton said, awed. “I didn’t expect it to look like this.”
“I’ll get the Captain,” Commander Pippleton said not taking his eyes off what he saw. “She’ll want to see this.”
*****
Captain Cook stood uncomfortably as Commander Pippleton and Doctor Lipton talked to each other around the computer. She looked over, annoyed. “I didn’t shuffle down here to watch you guys talk, what do you need to show me?”
“Sorry, Captain.” Doctor Lipton said. “We need to make one adjustment. The program will run shortly.”
The Captain walked over to a chair and sat down, thankful to get off her feet even for a few minutes.
“Okay, we’re ready,” The Doctor said as she ran the program.
The lights dimmed and what Marjorie saw caused her to sit up in her seat, for a moment oblivious to the extra gravity, and stare in wonder. Tiny blue glowing ribbons surrounded the Arwen in all directions and into ocean’s infinity. They were beautiful. Several dozen formed complex knots and seemed to move as one. Others were by themselves, reaching out, hoping to find a mate. There were millions, no billions, of them. “What am I looking at?”
“You’re looking at the only form of life upon this planet,” Doctor Lipton said. “And the things that brought us down. Each ribbon holds a few watts of power. By themselves, it’s not much more than a simple shock; all of them combined its strong enough to bring down a heavily insulated starship.”
“How did it bring us down?” Marjorie asked.
“Captain, there are still many things I don’t understand about them, so I can only give you my idea.”
“An idea is better than nothing.”
“Okay, here it goes. I think they somehow detected us, then communicated with each other; I'll need to figure that one out later. Once the message got out that a starship was in the area they manipulated the magnetic field and discharged all their power into it, no ship could withstand that kind of electrical pulse. In fact, I’m kind of surprised no one was killed; a powerful enough discharge could easily affect a person’s nervous system.”
“Where is it getting the power from?”
“Somewhere near the core, I think. We haven’t been able to scan that far down, too much interference from the ribbons.”
Captain Cook thought about this for a moment, trying to formulate the next question, trying to find a way to use this information to help them escape. “Can our energy beams cut through?”
“It’s possible, but we have to keep in mind they might try to defend themselves.”
“Another electrical charge? I don’t think we could survive another one.”
“Captain,” Commander Pippleton said, “I have an idea. We don’t know exactly why but the vines are not preventing us from going down, only up. I know it will be a terrible risk but could we keep heading to the core? There might be something down there to help us. Maybe these ribbons are actually our friends and are trying to help.”
“Heading down will crush us with only a small percentage of shielding.”
“We’re stuck here and the only way to move is down.” The Commander replied, his voice sounding confident, his shoulders hunched up a bit. It felt like a challenge.
“Get me the chief,” Marjorie said to the Commander.
Moments later the communication speaker in the room crackled to life. “Yes, Captain.”
“Chief, how are we doing with the shields?”
“It could take a few more hours to get them at half strength, then maybe a day to get t
hem at full strength.”
“Okay, keep working on it, let me know when we have something. Captain Cook out.” She turned to Commander Pippleton. “Commander, you have until we get the shields up to convince me heading down is a good idea. I want you and Doctor Lipton to work together on this. Doctor, you have my permission to use any means we have to get as much information about that core as you can.”
Chapter eight
The shuttle slowly approached the alien ship. Professor Ricter activated the outside lights and gave it a good look. The hull was dull brown with a red line that encircled the craft. The bottom was flat and the top had one large structure built on top of it. He could see no engines and wondered if they used a different form of propulsion. He also saw no place for them to house a Particle Accelerator. They used a different form of space travel to get here. How advanced were they?
He knew everyone on board had to be dead. No advanced race would let a strange craft get his get close without being alerted. Still, it felt good to run the scanners. Experience taught him never to assume everything was as it seemed. He ran a deep scan, making sure the sensors checked every corner of the ship, both inside and out. It was going to take some time, maybe an hour or more, so the Professor had some time to think.
He closed his eyes and was surprised to hear the computer alert him to the finished scan. He looked at the clock; an hour passed. He fell asleep. He didn’t recall being tired but with all that had happened, he shouldn’t have been surprised.
He looked over the data. The ship had been orbit a long time, about two thousand years based on the computer estimates. He paused, two thousand years. This star was two thousand light-years from Earth and they detected a powerful magnetic pulse. That pulse drew his attention toward the planet. Could it have been that pulse that disabled this alien ship? The strange coincidences were starting to add up to a disturbing trend.
The Arwen Book two: Manifest Destiny Page 6