by David Smith
Stavros realised he didn’t have time worry about that just now. Deciding to ignore it, he carefully bent over and began using his hands to wipe away the thick black dust, gradually revealing more and more of the structure.
As he moved forward from his point of impact, he found the edge of the access hatch and quickly worked his way around its periphery. Once he could see what he was dealing with, he understood there was little they could do to access the alien ship other than to suit up and space-walk across. The hatch was a completely alien design, reminiscent of a gothic arch rather than the square or circular designs found on most ships.
He called back to the shuttle “Sorry guys, you’ll have to suit up, there’s no way we can dock with this hatch arrangement. I’m going to use grapples to bring the shuttle closer, and we’ll open the air-lock without de-pressurising first: Hopefully the blast of air will clear the worst of the black stuff & make entry a bit easier. Ja’Han, bring over the portable power supply and the lock decoder: I can’t see a way of opening the door manually. Do you recognise the architecture?”
“It looks familiar, although I can’t be certain at the moment. I’m sure I’ll know when I get inside” said the Phanalian.
“Ok. Well let’s move it, I don’t like the way this damn black stuff is clinging to me.”
Once the shuttle was only a few meters away, the rest of the away team prepared. Harding was still a little dizzy, so he stayed with Crewman Emmerich in the shuttle to watch the spread of the black organic parasite. Chief Belle was still a bit dizzy, but couldn’t be dissuaded from going and suited up, cursing loudly as her helmet tapped against the big, sore bump on her forehead.
Belle, Ja’Han and Mengele crowded into the tiny air-lock and tied themselves to the anchor points within. They braced themselves and once Stavros confirmed he was clear of the space between the two hatches, Ja’Han overrode the controls and explosively decompressed the air-lock.
As Stavros had guessed, the sudden blast of air and moisture cleared the clinging black dust off a large area of the alien ship’s hull. It also blasted clean the mysterious object that had been clinging to the handle next to the hatch on the alien vessel.
They could see now that it was some kind of robot, beautifully fashioned and sleek, glinting of highly polished chrome wherever light caught it. As soon as he saw it, Ja’Han recognised it: “It’s an IPAD: This must be an A’Pel ship.”
“You know where this ship is from?” asked Stavros.
“Indeed. The A’Pel are an advanced species from deeper into the galaxy near the border of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. They are enamoured of technology and delight in it for its own sake. They rarely mix with other species as they believe their technology is superior.”
“Is their technology that good??”
“Well not really. It’s beautifully packaged and presented and compact and stylish, but tends to be fragile and expensive. The IPAD is a stereotype of their technology. It looks fantastic, but it’s just a funky service droid. It does what all service droids do, but is a bit prettier and has extra bells and whistles that you probably don’t really want or need. Not a problem, apart from the fact it costs three times as much, and you have to take out an insurance policy because they’re so fragile.”
“So we’re not likely to be in danger if we go inside?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so sir, no. A’Pelites are insular but not aggressive. They wouldn’t ever want to fight. Unless it was to try out their latest software application.”
“Ok, here we go then” said Stavros and he levered open the cover of the control panel and connected up the portable power supply to the terminals inside.
He synched the power supply to the alien circuits and the hatch slid smoothly open. There was a yell from Stavros as an alien creature flew out of the open hatch and careered into the shuttle opposite. As it did, chunks of it splintered off, and Stavros breathed a sigh of relief.
“Relax team, whatever it was is long dead and deep, deep frozen. It must have been trying to operate the air-lock from inside. The poor thing’s frozen absolutely solid. Scared the bejesus out of me though!”
Commander Mengele ran her tricorder over the frozen corpse: “It’s completely intact, with no signs of injury or disease. It appears to have died of hypothermia. Exceptionally well-preserved, but that does make it difficult to establish a timescale for death. Looking at the level of damage at a cellular level, my best guess is that the subject has been dead for at least one hundred years.”
“Well, it’s not going to hurt us and there’s nothing we can do to help it or anyone else inside the ship. I guess we just go in and see what we can find out for the record” said Stavros sadly. He called Emmerich on the shuttle to make sure Faraday’s computer was recording the video-feed and comms before he carefully manoeuvred himself through the open hatch and disappeared into the body of the alien vessel.
The others followed him and inside they found another two of the unfortunate aliens floating around the compartment, frozen rock-solid in bizarre poses. The ship’s artificial gravity had long since failed, and Mengele guessed that they had died where they’d fallen, and had frozen solid in that pose. Across long and lonely years they’d lain where they’d fallen, only to be levered from their resting places as Tiger’s away team had finally disturbed the air in the compartment.
Looking at the sad corpses as they drifted past, Stavros said, “There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s find a ship’s log or crew-roster and get the hell out of here. Ja’Han, what’s your best guess regarding the location of the bridge? Or a control room of some sort?”
“That way, Sir” said Ja’Han confidently. “I’m pretty sure I could make out engines at that end of the ship,” he said pointing to his left “and it’s a universal truth that operations staff and engineers own opposite ends of any ship.”
They worked their way forward and upwards through the ship, opening the doors one at a time and discovering more and more of the unfortunate A’Pelites as they went. It took them nearly an hour to reach an open compartment ringed with consoles that appeared to be the Bridge of the alien vessel.
The consoles were flat and smooth, with no visible markings, and each was served by a thin almost translucent screen only a few millimeters thick. Most were shattered, and Stavros led the team over to one of the few that were still intact.
As he and Ja’Han examined the console, Mengele asked “Do you think you can get the console working?”
Stavros poked around for a while longer before eventually admitting defeat. “Sorry Commander, power connections are pretty universal, but these consoles have connections like nothing I’ve ever seen. We don’t have the gear here to be able to connect to it.” Turning to Ja’Han he asked “Any idea where the computer core would be?”
“Actually I’ve already found it sir. It’s within the console. It’s incredibly compact and is probably a bit limited by our computer standards. They must have stored secondary data off the ship somewhere, I guess” shrugged the Phanalian.
“Well unless it’s stored within the cloud, it’s out of our reach, so we’re stuck with the local A’Pel core I suppose” mused Stavros.
“Is it worth trying to take it with us?” asked Mengele.
The Phanalian Crewman was no engineer and would have scratched his head if he hadn’t been wearing an environmental suit. “I think so. It looks like it can just be unbolted and unplugged, and I’m pretty certain someone like Deng or Park could work out a way of interfacing it with the PILOCC if we take it back.”
Stavros looked around the icy cold dark space and said “Ok, let’s get it out and get gone. This place is giving me the creeps.”
After much cursing and swearing and discovering of previously hidden fixings, the tiny computer core came free and Ja’Han guided it back to the shuttle. As they gently manoeuvred it out of the A’Pelite vessel they knocked the small service robot still clinging to the outside of the hull, loosening its grip, a
nd it began to drift away from the ship. Instinctively, Stavros grabbed at it, and almost as an after-thought, dragged that back to the shuttle as well.
Once inside, Stavros took the pilots seat and asked Emmerich “How are we doing?”
“There’s been a noticeable dip in temperature, but the deflector is still clean at the moment sir.”
“Thank god for that. I had visions of us winding up as people popsicles, just like those poor bloody A’Pelites. Let’s crank her up and get the hell out of here.”
Chapter 16
Commander Romanov had shut off power to the structural integrity fields in an effort to curb the rate of growth of the organic mass outside the hull, but could do nothing about the heat loss. In an effort to minimise the temperature differential, Dave ordered the climate controls across the ship to be reduced from the normal eighteen degrees to just five degrees. This led to an expected surge in demand for the full range of top-quality Aran knitwear available exclusively from Chief Money’s stores. It also led to an unexpected (but entirely understandable) increase in demand for contraceptive devices as the crew sought other ways to keep warm.
Over the same period, the shorter range probes began to return. By the end of the week the first of the long range probes had returned. Each probe came back with the same data: endless clouds of dust and gas, no visible stellar signatures. The only thing the entire fleet of probes confirmed was that the cloud was larger than one-hundred and twenty light-years in diameter. More specifically, they confirmed that Tiger was at least sixty light-years from the nearest edge of the cloud.
On the day the last probe came back with no useful information, Dave called O’Mara and Ensign David down to Stellar Cartography.
“Ok, it’s a bust. The probes have confirmed that there’s nothing but gas and dust within sixty light-years of our position. We’re going to have to take a guess and strike out blind. If that’s the case, what’s our best guess?
O’Mara looked at David and said, “Well, we have had a few ideas. We think the heat signature we’re reading is a stellar class T or Y brown dwarf-star. If it is, there may well be a gap in the cloud as a result of the star’s gravity. We won’t be able to see anything but we’ll get perspective on any movement in the clouds, which should help inform our decision as to which direction we travel in.”
“Ok. I was already thinking that there’s no reason not to move towards the heat source. Now the probes are back we only have to leave a trail of bread crumbs for Stavros. Ensign David, would you please upload our heading and a mission log to probe 884/5 and launch it as soon as possible.”
“My pleasure matey!”
Dave sighed, it was probably too much to expect “Aye Sir!” from a bearded man wearing a dress, but at least he wasn’t arguing.
“O’Mara, I want you to concentrate on ways to kill off the ….. black thingies. Do they even have a name? Who gets to decide?”
“Well, Alvari and I did discuss that. Normally whoever discovers the life-form suggests a name and it’s the prerogative of the Taxonomy Committee of the Federation Exo-biology Society to ratify it. They still prefer a basic Linnaean naming convention, but prefixed with the name of the planet of origin. As we don’t have a planet, we figured on using Tiger as the prefix, and as we don’t think the black stuff conforms to any known domain of life, we’d settle for something descriptive. Alvari came up with Living Organic Aphanobiontic Viral Exothermic Species.”
Dave thought about this “Tiger LOAVES?? Really?”
“I thought it had a ring to it” said O’Mara defensively.
“Well it’s certainly a bit of a mouthful, whichever way you slice it.” Dave quipped.
“But you’ll never get it past the Taxonomy Committee, they’re dead crusty!” shouted Ensign David from across the compartment.
“Ah, they’ll be fine, we’ll just have to butter them up a bit!” replied O’Mara getting into the spirit of the joke.
“I’m sure we’ll be the toast of the exo-biology community, but enough of the half-baked puns” Dave added, regretting it almost instantly. “Either way, and whatever they’re called, I need you to find a way to kill them off. Before they kill us off.”
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The next day, O’Mara outlined her strategy. “If we stay here, we’re going to lose more and more power as time goes on. We can’t afford to do nothing, if we do, we’ll eventually lose so much power we won’t be able to move. Logically we have to go before it’s too late. So we head for the heat signature. If it doesn’t help us to kill the stuff off, it might at least attract the LOAVES to another source of energy. While we’re there, we analyse the movement of clouds and decide which way we go if ….. sorry ….. when the engineers fix the drives.”
“Ok, I haven’t come up with any useful alternative, so we’ll go with that” sighed Dave.
"There are a couple of issues we need to keep an eye on" cautioned O'Mara.
"Which are?"
"Well, we haven't inspected the outside of the hull for a while. We've assumed that with the structural integrity fields off, the rate of increase of the LOAVES would be limited, but we have noticed a big increase in loss of sensible heat through the hull"
Dave snuggled into his thick Aran cardigan "Tell me about it!"
"To move, we need to put the structural integrity fields back on, which will be a banquet for the little buggers, and also we'll need to clear the main navigational deflector. If that is a small star, it'll probably have an Oort cloud, or we can at least expect some orbital debris, so we have to have the deflector up and running. We can probably use the transporter to skim the worst of it off the hull, but we might have to remove the fine stuff the hard way"
"So someone has to go outside and clean the deflector? That could be quite risky?" said Dave, becoming more worried as the conversation progressed.
"It could be, but then comes the bit that really worries me ....... " she shook her head.
"Which is??" said a worried Dave.
"Well, we have no idea what the output of the reaction drive will have on them. We're basically bunging a load of mass out the back of a reactor at enormous energy levels. If they can absorb that sort of power we could be in real trouble."
"Christ, I'd never even considered that! Do you really think they'd be able to absorb that much energy?" asked Dave.
"I bloody hope not, or we're going to end up as a soot-popsicle! Either way, I figure we'd best try something soon" suggested the Science Officer.
"Agreed." Dave called the Bridge. "Dolplop, Crash, we're moving out. Ensign David will send you a heading. Make ready to leave."
"Aye sir!"
Dave changed the comm-link and called Engineering. "Commander Romanov, we're going to attempt to move under reaction drive. I need you to watch the figures like a hawk. We have a concern that the LOAVES may be able to absorb some of the energy of the drive. If they can we may need to kill the drive suddenly."
"Aye sir!"
“Also we need to clear the navigational deflector before we get underway. Who’d be the best people to EVA and clear the LOAVES without damaging the equipment?”
“Probably Jane Doe and Lieutenant Sato. Both have quite a delicate touch and can be trusted to be patient. I’ll put a couple of other bodies out there too just to make sure we get through it quickly and don’t get any nasty surprises.”
“Ok, thanks Commander. We need this done as soon as possible. Every minute we’re here the LOAVES are rising” warned Dave.
“We’re on it now sir.”
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Ten minutes later, a team of six engineers were suited up and waiting at the airlock on Deck 12.
Romanov had decided to go out with the team herself, even though she struggled to find a suit small enough, and she stood ready to lead her people into the unknown.
“Ok. Pay attention. We don’t know how this stuff is going to react. Deng and Jonsen are getting a second team ready in case we get into tr
ouble, but in the meantime we’re moving out. Doe, Sato, Ianucci and McKay, use the scrapers to physically get the LOAVES off the surface, don’t use anything else, we know the LOAVES absorb energy to multiply. We need to clear the deflector enough for the field generators to operate efficiently. It should be enough to get it down thin enough that you can physically see the surface. Me and Forsell will stand-by and watch your backs. Let’s do this.”
She stepped into the airlock, followed by the others. Once inside, Lieutenant Ezquerra closed the inner door and at the signal from Romanov, depressurised the lock. They watched as the indicated pressure fell and when it reached zero, they all instinctively turned to face the outer door.
With the slightest of hisses, it opened and they stood and stared out into the abyss. Beyond the entrance the dust cloud hung dark and ominous, the lights from the ship largely extinguished by the creeping black organism.
Turning her intercom onto the local group setting, Romanov said “Ok, mag-boots on, leave your comm-sets on at all times and stay focused. Move out!”
She led them out onto the hull, clambering awkwardly as she left the ship’s internal artificial gravity and began to rely on the magnetic boots to glue her to the hull. She immediately noticed a difference: “Watch your step! The boots aren’t contacting the way I expected. They don’t feel like they’re gripping the way they usually do.”
Sato, in line behind her asked “Should we abort Commander?”
“No! We don’t have time. Just watch out for each other. Forsell, get ready with the grapplers just in case anyone loses contact.”
Slowly they edged forward, carefully feeling their way, slipping and sliding where the LOAVES were at their thickest. Romanov called O’Mara “The organisms seem to have some kind of resistance to electromagnetism. I figured the electromagnets in our boots wouldn’t be affected but there’s definitely a degree of reduction in attraction to the hull.”
O’Mara was observing from the Engineering Deck. “The lab boys didn’t notice anything, but these critters seem to be able to absorb virtually any form of energy, so it shouldn’t surprise us that they’re having an effect on magnets as well. Try shuffling or digging your boots in.”