Contents
Copyright Information
Dedications & Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
More from D. Benjamin Fassbinder
Contact the Author
Copyright Information
Second Contact: A Checkpoint Alpha Story
Copyright 2021 D. B. Fassbinder. All characters in this story are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or situations are coincidental.
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Dedications & Acknowledgements
Thanks as always to Matt Hoinacki for his continued beta reading services.
This is the story that Reddit built:
Like all of my stories, Second Contact was originally serialized on r/RedditSerials. If you enjoyed this story, you can find other ongoing stories shared one chapter at a time!
This short story was based on the following post from r/WritingPrompts from Reddit, by user Rolyat_Werd:
I went a bit of a different direction with it, but thanks for the inspiration!
Chapter 1
Politicians are a class of magicians, when you think about it. A wizard waves his wand, says abracadabra, and makes a rabbit come out of his hat. A president signs a sheet of paper approved by the legislature, and bam, a shiny new space station orbits Jupiter.
Not that magic exists, of course. The magician uses subterfuge and preparation to hide the rabbit until the time comes. The magic of politics is taxpayer money and the labor of thousands of experts. Checkpoint Alpha was an enormous undertaking, but the United Earth Federation spared no expense. First contact had changed many things about humanity, but vanity was not one of them. We still felt the need to impress the Tralingans with the heights of human knowhow and engineering. It was a bit like putting out the good china for the guests, only with a lot more math.
That sort of thing was beyond me, though. I like to tinker, but I’m no rocket scientist. The UEF Space Force hired me for my brawn and my military experience, and I’m fine with that. They needed somebody who could crack a head if a Tralingan got out of hand. Not that they had in my two years on the Checkpoint. They’re a polite species, even if they look like angular octopuses designed by the devil himself. It made me feel a little useless sometimes.
Ah, well. I just threw that onto the pile of things that good ol’ Gene didn’t need to worry about which, if I listened to Chief Scientist Polgar, was anything that wasn’t written in my job description. It seemed like a waste of a guy with programming experience, but that was also above my paygrade. I was happy, though. Centrifugal (or was that centripetal? I always forgot) force made sure I didn’t float out of my bunk at night. It also made sure that, unlike back on Earth, that bunk didn’t cost two thirds of my paycheck. I even had enough left over every month to squirrel some away into savings for the first time in my life and indulge in some side projects.
The greatest engineering achievement since the terraforming of Mars, and I saw it as a paycheck. You really can get numb to the fantastic. I’d dreamed of space travel as a child, but life on Checkpoint Alpha had started feeling rote. Not much happened. The ship was mostly full of scientists and a few of us security personnel. I only had to bust out my impact rifle when a Tralingan ship wanted access to the inner planets, which was twice a month at most. The rest of the time, we went through our daily checklists. I always made sure to get through mine quickly, so I could get around to my tinkering. It was a comfortable routine.
Until one day, when it suddenly wasn’t.
Wednesdays were my turn on the hydroponic gardens. We got regular supply shipments from Mars, but the fresh vegetables and oxygen were always appreciated. Garden duty was my favorite. The circular station was made up of dozens of nearly identical rooms in the same, sterile metal and plastic siding. It was always a relief to see something alive.
The pneumatic door hissed behind me as I washed the green stains off of my hands. “Evening, Sarge,” said Junior Scientist Sanchez.
“Hey there, Joseph,” I replied. “What have you got there?”
He handed me a cardboard box. “Your package arrived. Too bad, really.”
I cocked my head at him. “How do you mean?”
“The Chief Scientist said to stop working on your little camera project last week, yeah?” Sanchez had a jovial nature about him, even when delivering bad news. It was almost irritating. “You ordered it months ago to get it shipped from Earth, and now it’s a waste of time, money, and fuel.”
I shrugged. “What Cindy Polgar doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I don’t know what her deal is, but I’m not giving in this time.”
“I wouldn’t set her off,” he said. “She’s always been a hard ass, but she’s been in a snit lately!”
“Isn’t that the truth,” I muttered, remembering how she’d chewed me out for how the last batch of yams had turned out. I wasn’t the one who’d insisted on picking them a week early. “I don’t see what her deal is. You all get to waste your time on that SETI nonsense. What I do on my off time shouldn’t concern her.”
“Searching for new alien species is not a waste of time!” His voice was heated, but it was undercut by his broad smile. This was an old game with us.
“Sure it is,” I replied. “We can call off the search; we found ‘em. We and the Tralingans have explored dozens of systems, and there isn’t any life that we didn’t put there ourselves. It’s just us in this patch of space.”
“You keep saying that. I’ll find that stray subspace signal that proves there’s more than humans and Tralingans out there, and then I’ll be famous.”
“Oh yeah? Who was the second guy on Mars?”
“Camilo Freixa,” he responded without missing a beat.
So much for my point. “Sure, you know that. You live for space travel. You ask twenty people living on Mars today, though? They only know Randall Simmons, and that’s ‘cause they named the capital after him. You’re not going to get famous for discovering a second alien species.”
He shook his head and smiled wistfully. “We’ll see about that. I gotta get back to my post. Have fun with your toy. If Polgar gets pissed at you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I can handle her,” I said. I hope, I didn’t add.
The whole station was a kilometer in diameter, so it didn’t take me long to get back to my room. I set up my mobile console on my desk and plugged in the new camera. It didn’t look like it should have cost half a month’s salary, but it had a few tricks up its sleeve. I opened up my text editor and started playing with my code.
Tweaking hardware, optimizing software, and imposing order on chaos. That was when I felt alive. I hadn’t been able to get into school for it, but I didn’t need to be world class to enjoy myself. When I was creating, the rest of the universe faded away. All that existed was me and the problem to be solved.
I was so intent that I missed the sound of my door sliding open. “Gene! God moaning.” The wet slurp behind me could only be the voice of Septivus, our resident Tralingan translator.
“That’s good morning,” I said without looking up from my display. “At least, it would be if it were morning. This’d be evening.”
I could see his inky black face in the reflection of my monitor as he clacked his beak together twice. The gesture was the eq
uivalent of our shrug. “Evening, morning, is space, yes? Is all relatively.”
I didn’t grin at him. Tralingans tended to take smiles badly. They interpreted it as a threat display. Septivus knew better, but I didn’t see the need to irritate my buddy. “Sure, but I’m too tired for it to be morning.”
He swayed on his six tentacles, his version of a nod. “How is going the project?”
“I think I’m getting somewhere. This full spectrum camera is the real deal.” I held up my new toy, being sure not to accidentally unplug it from my console. “We wouldn’t need this if you didn’t all look the same.”
He let out an annoyed belch. “Is not our failing that you humans is not seeing in ultraviolet. We is beautiful when you eyes is working.”
I covered my mouth with a hand to avoid offending him. It was another old argument, and one that I only brought up to make conversation. You make your own fun when nothing ever changes. “I think I’ve got it working. Watch this.”
I tapped a few keys, and the camera let out a high-pitched whine. An instant later, an image of my face appeared on the screen. Angular text read:
SPECIES: HUMAN
SEX: MALE
ESTIMATED AGE: 35-45 TERRAN YEARS.
ENTRY #1 CREATED.
“I was thinking you is twenty-nine Earth years?” Septivus asked. “We is doing birthday last week, correct?”
I sighed. “If you ever do a Planetary Guard tour on Mars, bring moisturizer. They say it’s fully terraformed, but there’s something off with the atmosphere. That place’ll ruin your skin.”
He swayed again in agreement. “I see. Is that what software is for? Spotting humans? Is surprise humans not already inventing this.”
I shook my head. “No, that’s just to make sure it’ll work offline. If we were on the LAN, it would know me from the the Checkpoint’s database. Here’s the real test. Hold still.”
The camera whined again. This time, my mobile console took longer to load the data, but it eventually spat out:
SPECIES: TRALINGAN
SEX: MALE
ESTIMATED AGE: 40-75 TRALINGA YEARS
ENTRY #2 CREATED
The readout displayed Septivus’ face. He was right; my eyes saw black, glistening skin, but the camera revealed overlapping whorls of colors, the ultraviolet patterns of his species translated into the human visual range. It was beautiful, in its own way.
Septivus let out a raspberry with his breathing hole that splattered the back of my neck and jumpsuit. “Slandering! I is only forty-one!”
“Then it’s in the range,” I said, covering up my smirk at his vanity. “The last camera didn’t see you at all. It thought you were a black void.”
“Murphy, are you still wasting time on this?” groused Chief Scientist Polgar.
“Nice of you to drop by,” I said, leaving out the word “unannounced.” I turned in my chair and looked up at the brunette woman. She was dressed in a white Space Force jumpsuit just like mine, though her badges marked her as my superior. Of all the women to drop into my room unannounced, she was the most disappointing one I could think of.
Dad always told me a winning grin always cuts the tension, but I held off. She hated smiles more than a Tralingan when she was in one of her moods. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She pointed at the console. “I thought I told you to cancel this project.”
“You approved it originally, remember?” I stood, looming over her. Not that she was the type to be cowed by a physical display, but the foot I had on her gave me more confidence.
“Then I disapproved it. It’s a waste of resources when we have Septivus to tell other Tralingans apart.”
“We can’t just rely on him for that,” I said. “He has to sleep sometime. That crew last month showed up while he was in his weekly torpor. We had to load him up with energy drinks to just get through it!”
“Was bad torpor. Is having too much caffeine,” said Septivus. “Was grouchy all week.”
She crossed her arms across her chest, her angry glare fixing me in place. “This is an order. Drop it.”
“With all due respect, I don’t see what your malfunction is.” I held up the camera. “I bought this myself and I stopped working on it during working hours after you got all bent out of shape. And it works! See?”
Her eyes flew open, and she grabbed for the camera. My superior reach kept it out of her grasp. “No, don’t…”
A moment later, the results displayed on the screen.
SPECIES: UNKNOWN
GENDER: UNKNOWN
AGE: UNKNOWN
ERROR. NO ENTRY CREATED.
I dropped the camera, and I could hear something in it break. I didn’t care. I was too distracted by the pale white monstrosity that appeared on the screen.
“What in the hell is-”
I didn’t get to finish before she lashed out, knocking me to the ground. How in God’s name was she so strong?
“I is thinking is not a software bug,” said Septivus.
Chapter 2
Whatever the thing pretending to be Polgar was, it wasn’t quite the same size as her. My hand passed through hers as I tried to wrestle her off me, only for my wrist to be seized by an iron grip. I shuddered; whatever held onto me was sickeningly moist and had way too many fingers.
At least her head was where it was supposed to be. I grabbed my dropped camera with my free hand and smashed it against her forehead with all of my strength. If it hadn’t been ruined before, it certainly was now. She let me go and I scooted back across the steel flooring. I had to get to my bed before she recovered. I wasn’t technically supposed to have an impact pistol stowed away under there, but an unknown alien wasn’t supposed to be in my bedroom either, so fair’s fair.
Septivus stood back, frozen in shock and confusion. “Who is you?”
She ignored the Tralingan. I didn’t need to speak her language to know she was cursing me out. It was nice to know some things were universal.
She had already recovered as I slid the shoebox out of hiding. Before I could get my impact pistol out, she had produced an identical model from her jumpsuit’s front and leveled it at Septivus.
“Stop, or I will kill your friend,” she barked.
That gave me some hope. She knew what the gun was, but she hadn’t realized what an impact pistol could do. The energy burst it produced would hurt like hell, but it was only about as dangerous as a kick from a strong human. Some smart person had decided early on that the Space Force didn’t need handguns that could punch through a ship’s hull, and even pirates had stuck with that. I decided to play along for the time being.
“Stand. Keep your hands up. Good, good. Slide that container to me,” she ordered.
“You Terran language is very goodly,” said a quivering Septivus.
“Yeah, and she isn’t even supposed to be here,” I said as I kicked the closed shoebox over. “What’s your excuse, Septivus?”
“Terran grammar much confusing,” he replied.
The fake Polgar kept her gun trained on Septivus and looked me in the eye. She carefully bent down to open it and pocketed the spare pistol.
I kept up my banter, since it would force her to split her attention. “Look, you’re a reasonable… being. Put down the gun and let’s talk this over.”
“Not after what you did to my head,” she said with a wince.
“You attacked first,” I said.
“Maybe, but I have the weapon. I am in charge here.”
I found it darkly amusing that her speech wasn’t far off from how Chief Scientist Polgar normally spoke to me. “Then let’s compromise. How about you drop your disguise, so we can look each other in the eye? I don’t want to look at the Chief Scientist any more than I have to.”
She cocked her head and turned it sideways, reminding of me of an oversized bird. “Really? I flashed her memories. She finds you desirable.”
Desirable? Me? I filed that away for later. This was hardly the time t
o think about Polgar and romance; I was way too sober. “She’d better still be alive.”
“She is, for now.”
Septivus burbled, cutting off the intruder before she could say anything useful. “See, Gene? She is using memory download. Is cheating for language learnings.” He swayed back and forth, sounding pleased with himself.
She spun around, her eyes drawn by the motion. I took the opportunity to take a step forward. My quarters weren’t spacious at all. If I could get into lunging distance, I could snatch the gun right out of her slippery fingers.
“I see you there!” The air sizzled and I cried out as I was nearly knocked from my feet. Impact weapons are mostly silent. The telltale scent of burnt ozone and my aching ankle were the only signs she had pulled the trigger. And to think, Joseph had mocked my steel toed boots.
She had trained all of her attention on me for a crucial moment, and Septivus didn’t let the chance go to waste. With a wet gurgle, he sprang right at her. Tralingans are a short species, and even the real Chief Scientist Polgar could have taken him in a fair fight. Too bad for her Tralingans don’t fight fair, by human standards, and his jagged beak bit deep into her shoulder as his tentacles restrained her arms.
I meant to rush into battle, but her disguise flickered away. Seven soulless eyes pierced into me, and I felt like a bird sitting before a cobra.
The creature before me was more humanoid than Septivus, but not by much. It stood upright on two legs, but it bore way too many arms. One set was where they ought to have been, on the shoulders at the top of its torso. Another set, shorter and each tipped in a single, sharpened spike, sprang out from her chest. They ripped through the stolen Space Force jumpsuit and plunged into Septivus’ mantle. The blades were stopped by what functioned as a Tralingan’s skull, but the pain forced him to let it go. He fell to the floor and scuttled away, leaving a trail of blue ichor behind him.
It clutched at its own wound, its moist, segmented fingers secreting a liquid that patched up the gash. I was pretty damn jealous as I lurched forward on a sore foot. Unfortunately, I’d missed my shot; it fired twice more, hitting me in the chest and knocking me back onto my bed. Stars danced before my eyes and when I could sit up straight again, it was gone.
Confessions of the Magpie Wizard Book 1: Infiltration Page 1