by Trevor Wyatt
“What I don’t get,” Vu said, “is how the distress beacon works if the ship is dead.”
No one answered him because no one had the answer he was looking for. After a few minutes of tinkering with the spread of buttons on the panel and his device, he unplugged it, giving off a pronounced exasperation.
“I’m detecting one faint Sonali life sign here,” Vu said, turning to Mahesh.
There were four Sonali lying on the ground in the open area. Mahesh methodically went from one to another, and his heart skipped when he found the only living Sonali.
“He’s barely alive,” Mahesh said. He looked up at Vu. “Go get me my kit.”
Vu left the open area for the shuttle bay. Minutes later, he returned and brought with him a box. Mahesh took it and retrieved a small handheld device. He switched it and waved it across the Sonali like a wand.
“He’s really beaten up,” Mahesh said. “I don’t know if we can save him.”
“Let’s hope he wakes up,” Adachi said, turning away from the wall she was inspecting by the elevator. She stood over Mahesh, looking over as he mended the young Sonali’s body.
“He’s the only one who can tell us what really happened to this ship,” Adachi continued.
“Are you sure this is the only survivor?” Mahesh asked again, looking at Vu.
“The ship scans were conclusive,” Vu replied. “This is the only one. The rest of the crew…all dead.”
Chapter 4
“Help me carry him back to the pod,” Dr. Mahesh said to Adachi. “Part of the reason he’s barely alive is because of the atmosphere.”
Adachi crouched to her haunches at the tail end of the unconscious Sonali and picked him up. She slung her rifle behind her bag and let her handheld scanners fall to her right as they hung from her shoulders.
“If that’s the case, then he should be dead like the others,” replied Vu.
Mahesh handed his equipment back to Vu and hefted the Sonali into the air with Adachi. He groaned as the weight of the Sonali began to tug on his muscles.
Adachi showed no sign of strain. They began to trace their steps through the hallway, lining the ship’s long core back to their entry point. While they were walking, Mahesh theorized on why the Sonali was still alive.
“Well, it could be that he had some form of protection when the ship was disabled,” Mahesh said. “Maybe he was wearing a breathing device or maybe he was using some sort of medication.”
“Medication?” Vu asked.
“Yeah,” Mahesh replied, “the Sonali tried to test that some time ago in Devanagari. Results weren’t that great, though.”
A few moments later, they arrived in the bay where their pod landed. They took the Sonali into the ship, laying him across the tiny length of the pod while trying not to step on any of his body parts.
Being the last to come in, Vu closed the ramp and depressurized the aircraft. The compartment was flooded with atmosphere.
“Compensate for Sonali Prime’s atmospheric content,” Dr. Mahesh ordered. He knelt by the head of the Sonali and begun waving his device up and down his inert body, repairing dead and dying cells.
The device was one of the technological advances since the Earth-Sonali war. It worked by sending bursts of radiation into the cells, super charging them. The supercharged cells would then operate at a superior rate for a brief time, speeding up healing processes and mending of the tissues.
The Sonali originally designed the device, but through the years, it had been modified to fit the human physiology. Because of the modifications, Mahesh wasn’t sure if it would work on the Sonali lying across him.
The Sonali had a very pale blue skin. Mahesh assumed that was a result of very little oxygen getting into the tissues. He was thick and sturdy, his muscle mass larger than what was average for a Sonali male. This one was probably part of the military or worker caste—they had a strict system that discouraged every activity that they thought unnecessary for each kind of caste.
There wouldn’t be any scholar campaigning, since he didn’t belong to the leadership caste system. And there wouldn’t be a military caste member reading a lot of books, unless it was necessary to grasp certain military concepts of warfare.
With that, Dr. Mahesh assumed someone who had a heavy muscle mass and a well-built upper and lower body like the Sonali probably belonged to the military caste, or a caste that required strength as a main attribute.
Dr. Mahesh still wasn’t sure what the Sonali ship was doing on Tyreesian space. The metal shielded core that extended the length of the ship and the muscled Sonali were all pieces of the same puzzle—a puzzle he needed an answer to.
“We have an incoming transmission from the ship,” Adachi announced. She was crouched over the pod’s control panel.
The pod had limited steering control, being a point-to-point transport system. Hence, its forward aspect was a tiny workstation. It had no pilot seat; only a slab of seats on both sides. Whoever was operating the pod’s internal systems had to stand or kneel.
“TUS Seeker to the Away team, come in.” Lieutenant Commander Mary Taylor’s voice came through the ship’s comms as tiny and low.
Adachi glanced at Mahesh, motioning for him to respond.
“This is Mahesh, go ahead,” Mahesh replied while he waved the device over the Sonali’s body.
“Dr. Mahesh, what’s your status?” Captain Montgomery asked.
“Captain, we’re back on our pod after surveying the ship,” Mahesh reported. “There’s nothing, sir. The ship is totally dead. Not a single system is online. Not a single workstation or subroutine system is operational. It’s a ghost ship.”
“And the crew?” asked Jeryl.
“They are all dead, sir,” Dr. Mahesh replied. “All but one. We found him closer to the control room, where there were still traces of atmosphere. I’m still treating him. I don’t know if he’s going to make it, as you know I’m not particularly equipped to treat a Sonali.”
“Doctor, now’s not the time to be covering your ass,” Jeryl noted.
“Oh, I disagree, sir,” Dr. Mahesh replied with a wry chuckle. “Now is as good a time to cover my ass. But that’s not my intention. What I need you to understand is that if this Sonali dies, then we’ll lose our only hope of finding out what really happened aboard this ship.”
“How so?” Jeryl asked.
“Because there are no indications within the ship,” Mahesh replied. “According to Vu, the architectural framework of the onboard systems are all gone. So what we have is hardware without any software to operate it. In addition to that is the fact that the engines are dead. The power’s gone.”
“Tactical?”
Mahesh glanced back at Adachi for her to answer that one.
“Nothing we can observe, sir,” Adachi said. “I’ve scanned the hull integrity. I’ve scanned for particle discharge. I even tried to scan the weapons systems. Nothing. It’s all normal. Sir, I can tell you that these guys weren’t attacked by any of the known weapons in the galaxy: not lasers, not particle beams not torpedoes. They were disabled by something else…something entirely new.”
“Could it be a new Tyreesian weapon?” Jeryl asked, his voice tense but still in control.
“Sir, I think it’s too soon to tell,” Mahesh jumped in. “Maybe the ship wasn’t designed right. Maybe it suffered a critical infrastructural fail and killed everyone on board. It doesn’t have to be the Tyreesians.”
Jeryl chuckled at that. “Doctor, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were naïve. You don’t know the Tyreesians like I do. We’ve gone to yellow alert. Regardless of any of your theories, I’m not taking chances with the Tyreesians…and especially not in Tyreesian space.”
Mahesh sighed. “Yes, sir.”
He was about to add something to that when the Sonali jerked back to consciousness. He shot up to a sitting position, smacking into Mahesh’s head and sending him backwards. The doctor fell on his backside and pain shot up his back, str
iking the base of his head.
Adachi already had her gun aimed at the Sonali, who now looked from Mahesh to Vu and then to Adachi behind him.
“Put that gun away,” Mahesh ordered the tactical officer as he got to his feet and sat down in one of the seats by the wall.
“What’s going on there?” Jeryl asked.
“Sir, the Sonali just woke up,” Mahesh replied. He glanced at his device. “It seems like it worked.”
“Good, let me know what you find out as soon as you can,” Jeryl said.
“Will do, Captain.”
“Seeker out.”
The line went dead.
Mahesh looked at the Sonali and took a deep breath.
“My name is Doctor Mahesh. This is Vu Le and that’s Adachi Tomoe. We’re crew members of TUS Seeker…”
“Seeker?” the Sonali repeated after him with broadening slits.
Mahesh could see the fear in his eyes. He wondered what tales the Sonali had fed their people of the terrors unleashed by the Seeker during the Earth-Sonali war.
“Yes. But we’re not enemies. The Sonali Combine and the Terran Union are at peace,” Mahesh continued, wondering if his tone was soothing enough.
The Sonali relaxed, nodding his head.
Mahesh continued. “What’s your name?”
The Sonali opened his mouth to speak, and the Taylor implant in Mahesh’s ear canal got to work immediately, translating every word perfectly.
“My name is Sef,” the Sonali said.
“Sef, what were you guys doing this deep in Tyreesian space?” Mahesh asked.
“We were mining resources on a nearby uninhabited moon.”
“What happened? We got your distress signal,” the doctor asked.
Sef did what Mahesh decided to interpret as a shrug.
“I’m not sure. One minute we were mining the moon with our LPS, and the next moment the ship goes dark. No warnings. No explosions. Everything just goes dark. And then there were screams.”
He sucked in a deep breath, looked around the room, and then whispered the rest of his words. “And then deaths.”
Chapter 5
Lieutenant Commander Vu Le spoke next, breaking the profound silence that followed Sef’s description of what happened aboard the ship.
“LPS?” Vu said.
The Sonali looked up at the science and exploration officer of the Seeker, then frowned.
“It stands for Laser Pulse System. It’s the metal thing you see at the core of the ship running its entire length. We use it to mine planets from orbit.”
“Oh…” Vu said and kept quiet.
“So, let me get this straight,” Commander Adachi Tomoe said. “You were blasting that pulse down an uninhabited moon and then it just stopped working?”
There was a hint of incredulity in her voice.
Adachi realized that she was still holding onto her weapon, finger on the trigger, but with the muzzle pointed down. She could aim and shoot before Sef could do anything to harm any of them.
“Yes,” Sef replied, shaking his head vigorously and obviously not catching Adachi’s incredulous tone. “That’s exactly what happened.”
Adachi looked at Mahesh, arching an eyebrow. Mahesh could hear the unasked question: do we believe this guy?
Mahesh wondered about it. He couldn’t be lying, could he? After all, they found him close to death. Mahesh took a moment to observe the Sonali’s physical appearance one more time. In the heat of trying to revive him, he hadn’t take the time to check him out.
Sef wore a well-tailored orange coverall. There was an insignia on his left breast and a briskly stitched Corps in Sonali lettering—Mahesh wasn’t exactly literate when it came to the Sonali language, but he could figure out a word here and there. He just couldn’t tell if that word stood for corporation or if it was a military arm. He was ready to wager that it stood for corporation, since this was a mining vessel, but he didn’t want to assume.
There were no signs of blood on his clothes. There were smudges and stains, as one would expect from a miner, but nothing out of the ordinary. They had no reason not to believe Sef. Nevertheless, they had reason to worry.
What exactly had happened in here? Was this some form of bioelectric virus? Maybe it affected both man and machine. Mahesh discounted that possibility, because they should have been able to contain the virus before it got so bad as to disable the ship. Something was up, and Mahesh was finding it difficult to put his finger on it.
He wasn’t used to these kinds of away missions. He was usually consigned to his sick bay, where most of his work was at. Sometimes he went to the CNC just to speak with the Captain, or see a CNC officer who wouldn’t come to the sick bay for appointment. He also went to the CNC to bug Jeryl about getting some medical supplies that the matter resequensor on the ship couldn’t produce.
As such, Mahesh had little training in interrogation…or, really, any kind of investigation. Jeryl should have been here, but it was too dangerous. The Tyreesians could show up at any time and in that case, Jeryl was better off on the CNC than in some pod on a ghost vessel. A medical officer was much better suited to lead the away team or at least be a part of it.
Mahesh knew that he couldn’t find out the answer to this puzzle by trying to be someone he wasn’t. He was a scientist. He knew how to apply scientific investigative principles. He had to use something he was good at if he was going to crack this puzzle and really find out what was really going on.
There was only one way for him to work out a solution, and that was the scientific way.
“Sef, look at me,” he said.
Sef, who had been staring blankly ahead, glanced at Mahesh. The air around them was becoming misty and gradually taking a purplish mist as the atmospheric component of the air changed. In Sonali Prime, the sky was purplish.
“We were in Terran Union space when we got a distress signal from your ship,” Mahesh said. “That happened more than three hours ago. That’s why we came here. When we scanned your ship we found that all the systems were dead and that there was only one person alive.
“Something terrible has happened here and we need answers. I know you’re tired. I know you’re distraught. But I need you to relax and think clearly about what happened. Before the systems went off, did anything strange happen? Did your ship make contact with any vessel? Did you get a message? Anything out of the ordinary?”
Sef began shaking his head even before he thought about the question. Oddly, Sef didn’t seem distraught—merely tired.
“No. Nothing. I was at the central control panel, managing our mining operations, because I am the head of instruments. Then, all of a sudden, the lights went off. The alarms, which went off for brief seconds, died out…as did every other instrument in the ship.”
“The core shut down and we began to drift,” Sef continued. “We all started to cough and then struggle with breathing. Then, I heard screams as the hatches opened of their own accord, sucking out the air in the ship along with everything and everybody near the open hatches that weren’t securely fastened or held down.”
“Why did the hatches open up?” asked Adachi.
“It’s a very old ship,” he replied. “Some of the hatches were already faulty. There were systems designed to keep them closed, sure…but as soon as we lost power, they just flung right open.”
Sef shook his head. “Those poor souls. They died a horrible death.”
“You said you heard the alarms go off for a few seconds before they too died out,” Mahesh said.
Sef frowned and was silent for a moment. Then he nodded.
“Yes. I remember thinking about it. Sometimes the alarm goes off by itself, because the wiring of the ship is…well, it’s complex and in need of a complete overhaul. So it could be the systems were just acting up again or that we were genuinely in trouble.”
“Which do you think it was?” Mahesh asked.
“Well, we are trespassing in Tyreesian space,” Sef said. “I wouldn�
��t put it past them. But it could have been a number of other options, including a breach in the hull, an explosion of a nearby star, the core draining all the power in the ship…”
“Could that happen?” Vu asked.
“Well, technically, yes,” Sef said, “but I highly doubt that.”
“Why?” Mahesh asked.
“Because our power core is self-replicating,” Sef replied. “Even before it ran all the way to zero, it would have bounced back up. That gives the ship an unlimited amount of energy.”
“Not a bad way to power up a weapon ,” Adachi muttered behind him.
Sef didn’t catch what she had said.
“Since you lived longer than every other person in this ship,” Mahesh continued, methodically running down all his leads, “did you activate the distress beacon?”
Sef shook his head. “That can only be done in the control center. The elevator opposite the central control panel leads straight to the control center.”
“So you were never there?” Mahesh asked.
“No,” Sef replied. “I was trying to survive…Although I did try to contact the Captain. He answered me, but before I could get any information from him, he gurgled to death.”
“So where would the distress signal be?”
“It’d be broadcast from the control room. In fact, it’d be on the view screen. You’d see it the moment you walk into the control room.”
Mahesh rose to his feet. “We need to find that distress beacon. We have to find out why it wasn’t affected by whatever affected the ship.”
Adachi said, “And we have to do it fast and get the heck out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”
“Can you walk?” Mahesh asked Sef.
Sef answered by slowly coming to his feet. Mahesh grabbed a breather and set it for the optimum air content of the Sonali home world. He helped the Sonali wear the breather, then he gave Vu a signal.
Vu depressurized the pod before opening up the hatch.
They all returned to the central control panel area, where Sef tried to bring the systems back online to no avail. They then entered into the bulkhead via the nearest hatch and climbed through the thin space up to the control room. They exited at the rear of the control room.