"Did I miss something?" Gwynn asked. "What are the chances that just as we happen to show up at top secret Casseract Industry coordinates we're transported out of regular space, all the way here. Someone knew what would happen."
"This is all just theorizing," Safa said. "I doubt we'll ever find answers to even a fraction of the questions I have right now."
Oliver groaned, rubbing his hands over his face to try and block out all the people around him.
"We should go get a closer look," Safa said, likely at the very same moment that the idea popped into her head."
Reacting, Oliver shook his own head before even thinking on the issue. "It's too dangerous. We're not equipped to deal with aliens." Someone was going to get themselves killed, and then there really would be no going home again.
"No one is ever going to come ready-made to deal with first contact," Safa said. "We're here, it might as well be us."
Yes. Yes. Yes. Part of Oliver screamed inside him, trying to shout through his fears. This was what he had always wanted, always dreamed of. But it was too risky. He hadn't been prepared for any of this, and even if he did decide to go for it, what could they do when they got there? The Lexiconis’ sensors were handling this even worse than he was.
"We have to at least try." Gwynn looked about ready to climb out the nearest window and scramble onto that ship, spacesuit be damned. Consequences be damned. "We're never going to get out of this place if we just keep poking along and not actually doing anything. We found aliens, and now we're just going to ignore them? No chance in hell. We're not going to find a huge this way to the exit sign in here, Oliver. We're going to be the ones to take the chances, or we're never getting out of here."
She was right. And worse, everyone else already knew she was right even though Oliver was still fighting against every word. He'd taken the job that had gotten them here, this was on him. No matter if they took on this challenge or waited for the next one, they were going to have to start taking chances, with their ship and with their lives.
His crew looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to lead them. Oliver always told himself he trusted his crew, and there was never any doubt that he'd assembled a strong team. If anyone could get out of this, it was them, but not if they kept avoiding any potential trouble.
Trouble had already found them, Oliver had brought the Lexiconis to its doorstep. And the next step to getting them out of it again was to go check out an alien space station in the middle of an impossible void. If Oliver could play this smart, this had the makings of one epic adventure.
So, what was he waiting for?
"Let's go."
Chapter Ten – Oliver
Pulling the ship closer to the alien craft had only been a disappointment for the possibility of first contact. The closer they got, the more obvious it became that whoever these aliens were, they had met a similar fate as the last ship that Oliver's crew had encountered. Most of the damage was minor, but a few massive holes had been punched into the outer walls as well, ensuring no atmosphere was left inside.
There would be no first contact today, but the mission remained the same. They needed as much information as they could find, along with food, supplies or anything else that might be useful. Oliver had briefly played with the idea of pulling his entire ship right up to the front door, going in as a crew and working as quickly as possible. But there were too many unknowns while the stakes remained as high as ever.
Half of the crew would wait at as safe a distance away as they could, while the rest would board the alien structure for an hour, see what they could find before heading back home to regroup and come up with a better plan.
The Lexiconis' only shuttle never got much use. It had come as kind of a gift with purchase, and they had the cargo space to keep it, so it was always there waiting, but mostly it was gathering dust.
Now, the little ship was actually somewhat comforting, like taking a piece of home out into the universe with him as he, Sprocket and Gwynn crept toward the alien structure, ship, none of the above. Gwynn and Oliver took turns at the helm—unfortunately, they didn't have far to go—as all three of their little away team pulled on their space suits and got ready to step into a foreign landscape.
While the suits Oliver had purchased for his crew weren't nearly as bulky as the last generation, Oliver still felt awkward in the black ensemble, and resisted pulling on his helmet until the last possible second as Gwynn pulled the shuttle in through one of the large holes in the mid-level of their destination. No sense looking for an official docking area, there wouldn't be anywhere there to greet them.
The shuttle thudded to the ground in a landing that was anything but graceful. And despite telling themselves there was nothing to fear from this wreckage, all three people on board waited in silence anyway. Just in case. What if these aliens didn't need oxygen to live? Didn't need any atmosphere at all?
Back on board the ship, they had already played through all of these scenarios, Safa assuring them that it was extremely unlikely that there was intelligent life out in the universe that could survive in the vacuum of space, let alone be a threat.
And still, they waited. But no one came, no weapons fired, the shuttle wasn't spit back out into space.
Silently, they each took their positions in the shuttle's airlock, sealing the ship back up behind them so there would still be air waiting when they returned.
If they returned.
After turning on all of his suits available lighting, Oliver hit the red button to open the back door, entered the safety-key and watched the door slip open, his insides bubbling with anticipation.
If he only thought about the fact that he was about to be the first human to ever set foot on an alien ship, it was easy for excitement to take over anything else he might have been feeling. At this point, nearly everything else was outside of his control. But this much he could do.
Gwynn lurched forward slightly, pretending to prepare to take that first step instead but jerking back at the last second. "Kidding," she mumbled into their open communications link.
"What was that?" Safa asked, voice crackling through static. The Lexiconis was still close enough that they could pick up everything being said, or swoop in to get them within minutes if they had to.
"Never mind," Oliver said before this moment devolved into the girls chattering to one another.
He took the step, settling his boot on a thankfully solid surface before exiting the shuttle entirely, moving out of the way for Sprocket and Gwynn to join him.
Together, the three of them directed the lights beaming from their arms around the room where they'd landed. The walls were white and looked like they might be coated in something not too dissimilar to paint, but otherwise there was nothing to see. Anything that had once decorated this room had been sucked out into space, possibly a long time ago.
The door was easy to spot, rounder and taller than those he was used to. Did the design speak to the kinds of beings who had used them, or were they merely that way for the aesthetic?
More than likely, he was about to find out. Getting Sprocket's attention, he jerked his head toward the sealed metal entryway, and took two long strides to get there himself. Without waiting and giving himself a chance to overthink this, he pushed. The door didn't budge.
"Ready?" he asked, once Sprocket reached him. They each took one of the magnetic seals they'd brought with them, placing them together in the center. "Go for it," he said when they were set, as Gwynn came up behind Sprocket.
Even in nearly no light, Oliver could make out the muscles moving through his friend's body as Sprocket pulled on both handles at once, trying to slide the door toward him. Nothing happened, so Oliver took his own turn, trying to move the door sideways enough that they could get through. The door remained stubbornly unresponsive.
"Try moving it either up or down," Gwynn said. She'd moved behind him now and was bouncing in place with energy that was probably the result of countless emotions at onc
e.
Her guess was the right one. Once Sprocket and Oliver used their combined weight to pull down together, the doorway slid downward, until the top of it was flush with the floor below.
Shouldering her way past Oliver, Gwynn entered first. "Don't," he said after he and Sprocket had joined her, leaving the door they'd come through open in case they needed to make a quick escape.
The light in the enclosure of Gwynn's helmet perfectly illuminated her unimpressed expression as her dark eyes rolled upward. "Yeah, yeah. You have to be the first one to see everything."
Was that what she thought of him? Or was the urgency of their situation getting to Gwynn more than she was letting on? "Either that or I should be the first one through in case some sort of alien life form had been prepared to eat whoever came through that door first."
After a beat, Gwynn extended her arm outward toward the corridor they'd just entered. "After you."
Working their way through the ship, relying on their suits for everything from air to gravity, was slow going. Every room and passageway took far longer than it should have to check, only to again and again find nothing but odd, rounded pieces that looked to have been crafted from wood and might have been furniture. At least they had the hang of the doors, and didn't have to waste too much of their allotted time getting from room to room.
"We'll go until the end of the hour, then turn back?" Oliver said after their fourth failed attempt at excavating what was essentially a tomb for anything that might help them. The plan had been just half an hour in, and then the same amount of time back, but so far there was nothing to bring back with them. They'd made it this far, and needed something to show for themselves. Some relic of this alien culture, or even better some clue as to what had happened to this ship or how to escape back to regular space.
"Roger," Safa said from the ship, tone unreadable. The crew on board were being uncharacteristically quiet, but so far had always been there to offer up reassurance or confirmation. They were there, they were waiting, but they weren't going to be a distraction.
The moment Oliver stepped through the next threshold, he could tell that this room was different than any they'd visited so far. Instead of sparse furnishings and no clues about the alien race who lived on board, this room felt lived in.
Oliver allowed himself a moment to let that sink in, to appreciate that a person, whether or not they'd been human, had lived here.
The large object in the center of the room was clearly a bed, equipped with a pale green blanket. Oliver touched the corner, wishing he could feel the texture on his skin instead of just imagine it through the gloves of his suit. Someone had slept here.
Art lined the walls, framed with pride. Colorful squiggles and shapes lined parchment. It was possible that these aliens simply appreciated a different look than human art, but Oliver suspected they'd all been drawn by children.
Children.
The shows and movies he'd grown up on had so rarely shown alien children, the full scope of their imagined life cycles.
"Holy Shit!" Gwynn said beside him. Before Oliver had the chance to tear his eyes from the art on the walls, she was already moving too quickly to grab. The light of her suit was focused on a prone form slumped in the far corner.
"Stop," he said too late. That was a person. A dead person.
A dead alien.
Except, they couldn't know for sure that it was dead. They couldn't know anything at all. Oliver might have been about to face the moment he been dreading ever since he'd first taken on a crew of his own. The moment when he got somebody killed.
But Gwynn ignored him. Didn't stop until she'd reached the body.
It was too easy for Oliver to imagine what would happen next if that same prone form sprung to life, reaching out and ending Gwynn's in a matter of seconds. Maybe it would look like one of the unfathomable renderings of an alien from horror movies. Or it could be more humanoid, familiar. But the result would be the same.
Except the moment never came. Gwynn kept moving and the alien corpse stayed perfectly still, leaving Oliver no choice but to follow behind and hope he could catch up before anything went wrong. Or at least anything more.
"Guys. Brace yourselves, but I'm looking at an alien right now." Oliver caught up right as Gwynn announced her discovery over the comms.
Looking down, Oliver directed his own light where Gwynn's was pointing, adding to the spotlight, and taking in his very first look at an alien.
"There's something alive in there?" Safa asked in his ear, horrified.
"No," he said barely at a whisper. "It's a body."
"That's. Wow," Sprocket said, catching up to them.
It was the strangest feeling. No matter how much Oliver tried to explain to himself that what he was seeing had two legs, two arms, a body covered in gray fur and a head far longer than anything he'd ever seen before, what he kept coming back to was the fact that the alien had died wearing clothes.
The alien's outfit was made of one piece, like a jumpsuit, rather than a shirt and pants. But it was wearing clothes. It had been part of a race that had felt the need to cover their bodies. It was even wearing shoes, or more specifically boots, that splayed to cover a foot three times wider than any humans.
He couldn't tell if the alien was male or female, but its head was turned down toward the ground, so for all he knew it was also wearing makeup, or glasses, or some other little thing that he'd subconsciously always thought of as human.
Which would only make it harder to come to terms with the fact that whoever this alien had been, now they were dead and exposed. Whoever they'd been, they were gone now. And humanity's first encounter with an alien lifeform would now forever be Gwynn discovering a dead body.
Glad his friends were too distracted to speak, Oliver pressed his lips together and pushed the sadness back inside him. He'd deal with it later. But for now, he had to deal with being one of only a handful of humans who knew not only they weren't alone in the universe, but that they were horribly outmatched.
Whatever had come for these people could come for them too. They hadn't come on board to mourn, but to find a way to avoid meeting the same fate.
"Let's go," he said, voice gruff, cutting Gwynn off from giving a detailed description of her discovery to the crew waiting on the Lexiconis.
They weren't going to stay and gawk at this person any longer.
The next room was an extension of the living quarters they'd just found, decorated with art painted directly on the walls rather than on canvas. The central focus of the room was a table and chairs which while oddly proportioned could be used by humans easily enough.
The person in the last room had probably eaten their meals at this table.
"Sprocket, could you close that door?" They'd try and find another way back, and if they couldn't do that much he could at least give one lost soul a few minutes of dignity in death.
As they moved from room to room, Oliver was constantly bracing himself for the moment he'd find the next body. Three rooms further in and there weren't any, which only slightly lessened the blow he felt each time they discovered some other clue about what life on board this station had been like.
Gwynn found what looked like a personal computer, built like the human desktops from a century ago, but neither she or Sprocket had been able to turn it on.
"There isn't anything useful here," Oliver said, more to himself rather than directly to anyone as they entered another hallway.
"Useful, no," Gwynn said, conceding the point. "But interesting. I wish these suits could record pictures."
"I'll be sure to mark your complaint."
"Do we even know what we're looking for?" she asked.
"Supplies. Food, anything we can use to help with repairs. Computer logs would be a huge win."
"Why?" Gwynn moved to stand in front of him, frowning. "We don't know if we can eat their food, if we can adapt any technology they use for ourselves, or how to read their language. Nothing we find here wi
ll help."
"Do you have any better ideas?" Oliver said, tired, and frustrated.
"I'll run a scan of the area," Sprocket said, probably trying to prevent an argument before it happened. "Now that we're past the hull, maybe we'll pick something up that can at least point us in the right direction."
Oliver shrugged, suspecting Gwynn was right. She'd wanted to come on board as much as anyone, but they'd all been naive to think there would be something here that could help them. It was all too foreign, too alien. They probably weren't understanding half of the things they were looking at.
"Oliver," Sprocket's voice came through the speaker in his suit. "I'm getting power readings from deeper inside the ship."
"You said this thing was completely dead."
"I'm not exactly working with an exact science here. But I'm getting power readings now. Do you want to check it out, or should we head back?"
Both Gwynn and Sprocket looked at him expectantly, and he could almost hear everyone else back on the ship waiting for his answer too.
Go deeper or retreat?
Sometimes it sucked being the captain.
"Let's keep going." They'd come this far.
The tensions in Oliver's chest never once lifted as they made their way deeper and deeper through the maze-like layout, extending their time on board for another hour, then another. The design behind the vessel had probably made perfect sense to whoever had lived there, but it only left Oliver feeling more lost than ever. Or maybe a little homesick for his own ship.
It didn't matter how many times Sprocket reassured him that he was marking their path as they went, Oliver couldn't help imagining getting so lost that he ended up just as dead as the first alien they'd found.
And the first hadn't been the last. Their second hour on board marked six dead aliens and counting, each one belonging to the same race as the first. And as much as Oliver tried not to look, each body told him new things about these people.
Into the Void (Beyond Humanity Book 1) Page 8