by William Wood
“No,” Astra said. “And calm down. At no point was the barrier compromised. I wonder if it died. Maybe it had a self-destruct or something. When it realized it couldn’t escape, and killed itself.” Calvin’s mind reeled. “Now what?”
“I have no idea,” Astra admitted. “I need something to work with. From all I have seen, the Goremog have mastered complete, total, foolproof invisibility.”
“I don’t get it,” Calvin said. “The probes you used went right through it? It has no substance? That’s not possible. It still has a form, right? It came into physical contact with Nils, and caused him physical harm. It damaged the engines and all other mechanical components. That was physical.”
“Yes, and I don’t know,” Astra said. “But I’m telling you the monster in there defies all science, as far as I know. I sent in probes to try and touch it, but I couldn’t find anything solid there.”
“Well, maybe you’ve been focusing on the wrong thing,” Calvin suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, through all of your testing, you’ve been trying hard not to kill it. Maybe that’s preventing you from making any progress. Your methods haven’t been strong enough.”
“Hmmm,” Astra hummed. “I suppose that could be true, and I have been considering more severe forms of testing. It might be time to do that. I was afraid of damaging the monster too much, I mean, what good would it be to destroy its ability to hide. I won’t have anything to test!” “It looks like you might not have a choice,” Calvin said. “But if worse came to worse, you could still examine dead tissue, couldn’t you?” “That’s assuming it’s in the tissue. What if its technology imbedded in their skin, or their internal organs, or in their skeletal structure? It would be a lot easier to analyze if it’s all intact.” Then she thought about it for a second. “But, it wouldn’t be impossible. I’ll get back to work on it, but I’ll think about what you said.”
Astra made a decision, and the next test came early the next morning. She said it was time to become more aggressive. Time was not a resource they had a lot of. It was true that nobody had ever captured a live Dark Terror before; however, if they were going to find a breakthrough, and have it affect the outcome of their mission, it would have to be soon. They needed to start dissecting and researching it very soon, and maybe killing it would reduce stress on the crew. Having a live Dark Terror on the ship was not good for them. They were one power failure away from letting the monster loose to kill them all. After weighing all that, the decision was easy. Astra said that she’d wasted enough time already, and had delayed the critical job that she had to do, and that was completing the work of repairing the segments, and making sure they would all work together.
Calvin didn’t have anything better to do, so he decided to watch the test.
Calvin made the mistake of asking Astra exactly what she was planning to do.
“All right, we know the monster is in there,” Astra said. “And all tests so far have failed. Unfortunately, we can’t prove the monster is in there; it’s invisible and doesn’t seem to have any matter. We also know that’s impossible. I thought about it all night last night. I had an epiphany at breakfast this morning. Here it is: I want to change the nature of the monster’s existence.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Dev asked.
“Well, if we increase the temperature in the cage, high enough to force it into a plasma state, we could force it’s electrons to leave their parent atoms.”
“So your idea is to cook it to death?” Dev asked.
“Yes, essentially.”
“But you risk losing anything worth studying.”
“I don’t think so,” Astra said. “We have to force the monster to react, force a change. Once we force it to become visible, we can stop. There’s a chance, even if it’s a small chance, that we can still keep it alive. Does that make sense?”
“Not really,” Calvin admitted.
“Once it’s visible we can put it to sleep, and then study it.” “I’d say that was unnecessarily cruel, but given it’s a Dark Terror, I won’t say anything,” Nils said. “Just for the record, I think it’s a bad idea.”
Astra went to a nearby computer control panel and said, “OK, let’s start with five hundred degrees.”
Minutes passed, slowly. Five hundred degrees? That’s hot, but maybe not very hot for a Terror.
Several minutes passed; nothing happened.
“Alright, let’s try seven hundred,” Astra said. The force-field shimmered again as Astra turned up the heat. Calvin imagined he could feel the heat, but he knew it was impossible.
Eight hundred, nine hundred, then one thousand degrees; still no reaction. Astra screwed up her face and stared at the barrier. “It’s not going to work,” Wexton said, with defeat in his tone. “Clearly Dark Terrors can endure extreme heat.
The force field flickered, but stayed solid. Suddenly, there was a violent flash, and the walls of the force field were covered with blood and metal fragments.
“Oh,” Calvin said, horrified but mostly grossed out. “That’s disgusting. It exploded.” Astra quickly shut the experiment down. Astra frowned and walked closer to the barrier. It was now a dark colored square.
“I’m sorry Astra,” Calvin said, hoping to make her feel better. “Oh well,” she said. She sounded very disappointed. “I guess we can analyze what’s left, though I don’t think we’ll get anything valuable from that mess.”
“Just be careful when you lower the force-field,” Wexton said. “Or you’ll have a very big mess on your hands.”
“I, uh, told you so,” Nils said, shaking his head as he walked out of the room.
Calvin crossed the room to Astra and gently embraced her. “It’s over, right? That was all of them?”
“I certainly hope so,” Astra said. “I really do.”
“Well, you still have the other one you can study,” Calvin reminder her. “The first one.”
“Yeah,” Astra said. “I guess so.”
*
Calvin and Astra sat in the dining room. They sat quietly, alone. Calvin didn’t feel like talking, at least, not at first. He was content to eat in silence. Then everyone else showed up, got food and sat down. The conversation was light and intermittent. Calvin wasn’t entirely convinced that their problems were over. They had no way of knowing if there were any more Dark Terrors lurking on the ship.
“I want to say we got them all,” Astra said. “We’ve repaired the ship, we’re back in hyperspace. If there was another Dark Terror on board it would have tried to disable us by now. I think.”
“Yeah,” Calvin said. “I guess so.” But he wasn’t sure. He wanted to be, but he was so tired, he couldn’t think straight. He just knew, he would never feel safe on the ship until they could scan it and prove it. Calvin was tired, so very tired. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever being this tired before. After they ate, Astra suggested they go to the library to relax. He didn’t feel like it. He didn’t feel like doing anything, not even going to bed. He didn’t want to be alone. So he followed her down the hall.
Once in the library, Astra opened the curtains, and got them both something to drink. Something bubbly that she obviously hoped would make them feel better.
They sat on the couch. Calvin took a deep breath, then took a sip of his drink. It was light, bubbly and tasted very good; it reminded him of the drinks his people made out of summer fruits.
“Do you like the beach?” Astra asked casually. “Do you like going to the beach? I like it; the feel of the sun on my skin; the sound of the waves.”
“I never really liked going to the beach,” Calvin said. “But I do love the ocean. I love the openness, and the smell of the air, and yeah, I do miss the sun.”
They both took a drink.
“Oh, and I miss not being chased by monsters,” Calvin said, and then instantly regretted saying it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“You really thi
nk there are more Terrors on the ship?” “Yes,” Calvin said. “I do. And until we can prove otherwise, I’m going to feel uneasy.”
“We’re going to finish this mission,” Astra said firmly. “And when we do I’ll take you to a nice beach somewhere, and we can relax.” Calvin grunted in agreement, a sort of humored grunt. “I know a perfect beach,” he said nostalgically. “There’s a large sheltered bay called Point Descent, near the equator. The water is crystal clear, the sand is white and soft, and there is an endless supply of warm sun. I remember going out to swim in the ocean after the sun had gone down, and the ocean water was warm, like going into a bath. It was perfect. The way the lights reflected off the water. It sparkled and danced so beautifully. The pool was made of marble; in fact, a lot of the buildings were marble. I remember going there at the end of summer with my parents. The food was so amazing. Now, after all this time in space, I remember the breeze; mostly the openness. I always loved lying on the comfortable layback chairs, staring up at the stars, listening to the music.”
“Wow,” Astra said. “That sounds perfect. Please take me there.” “Of course I will,” he smiled. But deep down, he didn’t want to admit it, he was having serious doubts that he would ever see his home planet again.
Anticipation that bordered on dread was threatening to overwhelm him. They were approaching the eighth segment, the ship had sustained critical damage but they were able to repair it, and they had been boarded by the scariest thing imaginable; invisible Dark Terrors. He felt naked and vulnerable on the ship, and there was no escaping that for the time being. He couldn’t wait until they had all the segments, assembled the weapon, and ended the threat once and for all.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE:
CUSENDEA
Four weeks passed. Four weeks of slow, mind numbing boredom that Calvin found hard to deal with at first, but then became comfortable, and felt safe. Each day that passed with no sudden attack from a Dark Terror caused Calvin to feel more relaxed. By the time they arrived at the location of the eighth segment; Cusendea, Calvin had nearly put the threat out of his mind completely.
Azure Frost had been completely repaired. It took most of the spares, backup systems and used up most of the raw materials on board to do it, but the ship was restored. It had been cleaned and everything felt like it was back to normal.
They’d spent four weeks traveling in hyperspace without dropping back into normal space, in the hopes of losing any chance of pursuit from the Goremog scout they’d escaped from previously.
Tomorrow, Azure Frost would drop out of hyperspace at Cusendea. Calvin hurried down the corridor on the way to meet the others in the dining room. He’d spend the day learning to, or trying to learn how to perform basic repairs. The words of the repair droid that was teaching him replayed over and over in his head. Calvin laughed when he thought about it, ‘repair complete; See how easy that was?’
“Yeah, real easy,” Cal vin laughed. His stomach was growling. The last private instruction had gone past the start of dinner, past when he was supposed to meet the others in the dining room.
“Well, it’s about time!” Dev said when Calvin walked into the room. “We were about to send the combat robots out to look for you.”
“Sorry,” Calvin said, getting some food from the computer. “I see you didn’t wait.”
“Dinner waits for no one,” Dev said, taking a bite. Calvin sat down next to Astra. She gave him a quick hug.
While they ate, they each gave a report on the progress of their programs.
Dev went first. He was very happy to report he had made a new version of his personal cloaking generator. He’d tested it a few times, each test was a success. He spoke proudly of the fact that he’d solved the periodic flickering effect, and increased the use time dramatically.
“How’d you do it?” Astra asked. “How did you solve the energy problem?”
“You gave me a great idea,” Dev answered. “You said I should analyze Scribbles; she has a cloaking device. I did a thorough diagnostic of the system and how it was wired through her body. The good news was it was undamaged, but what I found most interesting was that it drew power from her main power core. Then I realized I could do the same with your advanced combat suits. I was able to hard wire it directly into the suit’s power source; problem solved.”
“That’s great,” Calvin said. “I hope that solved the problem.”
“I believe I did,” Dev said. “The test of the latest version is still running. Two days and the cloak is still working perfectly. Good enough for you?”
“Two days?” Calvin said, astonished. “That’s incredible.”
“Two days so far,” Dev added. “It’s still going. I think it will last as long as the power supply lasts. The best thing is, removing the internal power source freed up a lot of extra space. I was able to increase the size of the cloaking matrix generator. That solved the instability problem.”
“What about Scribbles?” Astra asked. “Have you made any progress?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Dev said. “I’ve tried replacing some components, but I spent most of my time on the cloaking generator.”
“I understand,” Astra said with no small amount of
disappointment.
“How are you doing with the Dark Terror analysis?” Dev asked.
“Well, I haven’t made any progress on that,” Astra said. “Well, I made an initial discovery, rather quickly. And that was that the Dark Terrors have a layer of ‘skin’ that I’ve never seen before. It seems to be the source of their ability to be invisible. What I discovered was that their skin could emulate its environment perfectly. Well, emulate may not be the best word. It can almost become its environment. For example, if it’s on the ship, exposed to our atmosphere, the Dark Terror will become the air that surrounds it.”
“What?” Dev exclaimed. “But just its skin, right?”
“Yes, just its skin. Somehow it becomes air, and blocks the inner layer, so you don’t see its flesh. Ugh, I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
“Unfortunately, it does,” Calvin said. “So that’s why they don’t show up on our sensors, and that’s why matter seems to go right through them.”
“Yes, but, they aren’t completely invisible,” Astra said. “Well, I shouldn’t say that. They are invisible. But I’m still trying to figure out a way to scan for them, a way to neutralize that ability. I’ve had some ideas, but nothing’s working yet. Don’t worry, Calvin. I haven’t given up yet. I know what this means to you; to us.”
“Thank you,” Calvin said, grateful she understood the scope of the problem.
“I’ve spent most of my time repairing the segments. It would be nice if the weapon would actually work when we need it to.”
“Yeah, that would be great,” Dev said. “But don’t you need to finish analyzing the new Dark Terror? If I’m right, if you can’t program the weapon with this new Dark Terror variant, it won’t actually destroy them?”
“Yes, that’s what it means,” Astra said.
Calvin knew too. They were running out of time.
There was more information that Astra was keeping just between herself and Calvin. She told him in private that trying to repair the sixth segment was a nightmare, and she deeply worried that she might not be able to repair it. But she did have one positive thing to report; she had finished scanning and copying all the other segments. Calvin could send the schematics and analysis reports to his father at his convenience.
“What’s the status of the engines?” Astra asked. For that, everyone looked to Nils. He was at the end of the table and looked like his normal self. His wounds had healed and he seemed in good spirits.
“The engines are running perfectly. The cloak, shields and weapons are all available at maximum power.”
“Excellent,” Astra said.
“I would just like to add something,” Nils said. “We used almost all of our spares and raw materials to do it. If we run into combat again, and get da
maged, we won’t be able to make repairs; not if we suffer as much damage as we did recently.”
“Can we rendezvous with the Alerian fleet?” Wexton asked. “We could resupply.”
“No, I’m afraid that’s not an option,” Astra said. “First of all we can’t contact them. There was a large Goremog fleet chasing them. My father won’t allow us to come into contact with any Alerian ships, it could compromise our mission.”
“Oh,” Wexton said dejectedly.
Astra waited until everyone was finished eating before she began the mission brief.
After they refilled their drinks and put their dishes away, she started.
“Tomorrow, as you all know, we will arrive at the planet Cusendea,” Astra began. “I’ll be honest, I have no idea what we’re walking into. The planet used to be a highly populated Alerian regional capital. It was one of our core worlds. The computer records say the eighth segment is in a lab on the outskirts of a large city. We should be able to find it easily enough. I don’t want to sit here and come up with a detailed plan on how we’re going to go in, only to change everything when we find out the situation is completely different than what we expected. Instead, I want everyone to be ready to go in, dressed in full combat gear.”
“Including combat robots?” Wexton asked.
“Yes,” Astra answered. “Everyone, including the combat robots. We’ll assume the worst, and be ready for it.”
“Any chance we could power up Petori and Freks?” Dev asked. “You said everybody.”
There was a pause. Astra looked at Calvin with a confused, thoughtful look, like she didn’t know how to respond. But Calvin knew. He knew exactly what to say.