Once the massive vessel comes to a carefully controlled stop, the small craft release their tethers and disable their lights, and the interior becomes very dark, save for the ambient light entering through the cube’s single open face. Then, all but one of the craft slowly propel themselves out of the cube. Cables running along the edges of the cube begin to move, and the final tarp extends to cover the last open face, privately enclosing the vessel contained therein. The two ships outside the cube take position opposite each other and their scopes begin to scan the perimeter.
Inside the cube, interior floodlights mounted on the metal beams that hold the shape of the cube power on and envelop the vessel in brightness. Against a remaining portion of the ruined hull, text reading The Harbinger is barely visible. The remaining small spacecraft opens its airlock, and five figures in military EVA suits emerge. They use the airjets on their tactical space suits to drift the short distance to the Harbinger and, rather than entering through an airlock like usual, easily drift in through the gaps in the patchwork hull.
“Overwatch, Viking One. We have entered the Harbinger. Canvasing the Ops deck.”
“Overwatch copies.”
The five figures spread out among the deck, slowly drifting in zero-g, searching. One figure fires a quick blast of air to stop himself, raises his weapon and pauses for a moment, but lowers it after determining his target isn’t a threat.
“Overwatch, Viking Four. Contact. Suited with patch labeled Riyadh. Appears to be breathing from an external air tank, but not conscious.”
“Solid copy; Viking Four, break off and bring them back through the belly cargo airlock. Expect decontamination and isolation.”
“Roger, Viking Four returning with luggage.” The man known to his team as Viking Four tethers the suited figure and air tank sprawled across the floor of the Operations deck to his suit and slowly drifts back to the space craft, cargo in tow.
On the deck of the Harbinger, the four figures remaining move about the deck, scanning for anything else of interest. Per their EVA combat training, the tips of their boots rest on a surface so that they can immediately push off to engage a threat with their close-quarters firearms. The lead figure turns to another, gives a command through his EVA communications, and dislodges a large gray box magnetically attached to the back of the other’s suit. He guides the box to the floor and engages a switch on the side, then the box magnetically attaches itself to the floor.
“Overwatch, Viking One. Three-P placed,” says the lead. Overwatch acknowledges. The lead figure unlatches and rotates away a panel exposing the side of the box, and from within pulls two thick guide cables. Cables in hand, he pushes away from the box and gracefully glides to the primary Ops station, where another member of the team has removed a quick access panel from the floor. They work together to feed the two guide cables through the access panel into their respective sockets.
“Overwatch, Viking One. Three-P connected.”
“Copy Viking One, proceed to power on,” replies the voice in their helmets. The lead figure drifts back to the metal box, and flips the second switch. Some LEDs engage on the outside of the box. The team sees a notification on the augmented reality display in their EVA helmets:
PORTABLE POWERPLANT INITIALIZED.
After a few moments, the capacitors beneath the battered Harbinger holographic display are charged, and the display flickers to life. The old hologram emitter is damaged, but it manages to display part of the boot sequence. It initializes slowly to a much older interface, but completes, and finally appears stable.
“Overwatch, Harbinger Ops online. We are moving to canvas the rest of the ship. Viking Three and Five, continue to hold Ops. Viking Two, with me,” says the lead, and the two push off into the depths of the ship.
Thousands of kilometers away from the black cube, a Martian destroyer cruises under thrust, a blue plume of electro-statically accelerated ions jetting out of the primary engine. After receiving a tight beam with identification and an encryption handshake, one of the destroyer’s tight beams aligns with the distant source and a secure connection is established. In a secure room within the destroyer, an uplink comes alive. Two techs sharing a single workstation type commands to interface their sophisticated military computer system with the Harbinger’s older Operations system. The contents of their display is mirrored to a larger holographic display in front of them them. A young officer stands before the large holographic display, waiting impatiently, tapping the toe of his dress shoe on the deck. An ordinary individual would be left fatigued by the highly aggressive burn that quickly brought the young officer from Mars, but the officer is wide awake, impatiently encouraged by the prudence of his mission given by one of the most powerful men on Mars.
After too long of a wait, the officer is relieved to see the techs finally pull a manifest of the Harbinger’s Operations log data onto the display. The Operations software was not functioning properly with sub-systems unpowered by the portable powerplant, but the techs were able to bypass the software and extract the logs directly from the underlying database. The logs end abruptly some fifty years ago, and the final log entry appears first on the display. The log is an automatically recorded event created by the commander’s order to disable the Operations system, usually reserved as a failsafe if the artificial intelligence becomes corrupt, unstable, or otherwise unreliable. The officer instructs the techs to load one record prior. The techs quickly write a query and the next log is displayed.
The officer quickly reads the contents of the log, quizzically tilts his head to the side, and his shoe stops tapping.
“That is enough; thank you two,” says the officer. “Please download the entirety of the logs and transfer them to the volume that has just been mounted to your workstation.”
“Yes, sir”, the two techs reply in unison. One gestures her hand to begin the operation, then, “Ok, sir, the transfer is underway. There are a few petabytes of data and the old uplink is slow, so it will take a while to copy.”
“Thank you both. Please stand up from your workstations,” says the officer. The techs stand and face the officer. “I would like to make it extremely clear this operation never happened, and you were never here. As always, you will both be monitored by the Martian Democratic Navy and Citizen Democracy of Mars to ensure compliance with this order. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the techs reply.
“Good. I will recall you two if I require anything else.”
Some time later, a heavyset Martian receives a communication and puts down his Europa-made gin. The cocktail straw swirls around the perimeter of the glass. He wants all his focus. He swipes the holographic display with his fleshy hands and taps a few virtual buttons to lock the door to his office, and dim the windows. The beautiful view of the elegant, green-filled Martian dome is obstructed by the tint, and the light reflecting off the gold and clear-coated wood grain scattered throughout the office becomes faint and moody. Perfect for the occasion, he thinks. Satisfied, he taps once more to play the audio message he received.
“Sir,” the voice of the trusted officer begins, “we have successfully recovered the Harbinger. The Harbinger’s logs show it encountered something beyond our solar system, an artifact, presumably of extra-system origin. The commander undertook a solo EVA to inspect the artifact. Logs show once he made contact, he ceased communicating with the rest of the crew and disappeared from visual. Several hours later, visual was made and he was brought in through the airlock. Once back onboard the ship, the logs are chaotic. It appears the crew began killing each other. Vital alerts indicate the death of all occupants onboard the ship except for the commander, and the embryos onboard were all jettisoned. The logs end with Operations being shut down by the commander. The whereabouts of the commander are unknown, but another occupant was found aboard the ship, identified as a crew member of the Riyadh. The Riyadh has accelerated out of the system, and the stealth probe that tracked the Harbinger since it reentered the system is pur
suing. I’ll have a full data dump copied to you as soon as the uplink allows.” The officer ends his transmission.
The heavyset Martian sits in the dark office, thinking, tapping his large fingers against the desk. How interesting. It was a prudent decision to not intervene; the vessel did him a favor by taking a couple of Jovian warships off the board. The crew member of the Riyadh aboard is an interesting development. He will remember to have his officer bring him back to Mars to be interrogated. He opens an audio channel to his assistant stationed outside his office.
“Yes, sir?”
“Have a second stealth probe prepped from our expeditionary scout orbiting Hyperion. I will be following up with coordinates and mission details.”
“Yes, sir. File under Jovian Reconnaissance?”
“No, this is black book. Quite black book,” the Martian says, and closes the channel. He opens a drawer in his desk, lifts some binders of information too critical to be stored insecurely in a digital system, fumbles open a small humidor, and extracts an old Cuban cigar. The treat is worth a fortune, let alone the real wooden desk in which it rested. He leans back in his chair, lights the cigar with an arc of electricity from a golden lighter, and puffs the delightful smoke. Faint light traces rays through the cloud, then, the gray smoke dissipates to reveal the corner of his mouth has turned up into to a slight, mischievous smile.
The Harbinger Page 7