Matriarch of Tor Nest shone bright, radiating the golden streaks of pride. Stynx was one of her spawn, and never had a great Mother-of-All been more proud.
Next, First Mother shared their interaction in the classroom of Professor Tottle. Again the Matriarchs were impressed, not just by the growing bond between the two, but also by Ritch’s war machines and the rabbit hole, inventive precautions that had saved them from Suij'Crai'C.
“The biped is creative and intuitive, a rare combination,” thought Matriarch of Quol Nest. “Also genuinely friendly toward an alien, unlike most of its species.”
“Yes, our candidate’s interaction with other bipeds will be far more challenging,” thought Matriarch of Relk Nest.
Matriarch of Kig Nest agreed. “Subtle finesse is required.”
There was unanimous agreement with that assessment. Once they became aware of the bipeds, the Matriarchs had launched astral odysseys to learn more about them. They had glimpsed historical bits and pieces that showed the bipeds and their AI companions engaged in wars against alien races. One odyssey revealed that as a result of those wars, the bipeds now had an xenophobic fear of anything alien. Understandable given the mass carnage they suffered, but overcoming such extreme racial paranoia meant a Meld would be far more difficult than originally anticipated.
“The bipeds are a suspicious species,” First Mother thought. “Many among them seek to destroy what they do not understand, or cannot control, therefore our effort to Meld may be perceived as an invasion. Our candidate must show them otherwise.”
Matriarch of Tor Nest had the utmost confidence. “My child will succeed regardless of the challenges ahead. There are none more adaptable. Our Form will Meld.”
“Our Form must Meld,” First Mother corrected her sister. “Our continued existence depends on it.”
Argo
Four hours later, after only a slight adjustment to Argo’s trajectory, they passed within easy snare range of the alien pod.
Down in the cavernous docking bay, Dupree sat in the elevated, airtight control booth behind the main operations board, operating the snare beam that pulled the alien craft inside. Sweat trickled off his brow. Gently, with extreme care, he slowly lowered it onto the third of four landing pads. Once the pod was down, mooring gaffs extended automatically from the edges of the pad to latch onto it, sliding across its smooth alien surface as they sought anchor points that simply weren’t there. Back and forth the gaffs slid, obediently following their programmed search pattern. Dupree, worried they might damage the pod, intervened, inputting an override command that caused the gaffs to retract back into the floor. A shrill alarm sprang to life. So did a message alert in big red letters that blinked urgently in front of Dupree: WARNING! Ship NOT Secured. WARNING!
After silencing the alarm, Dupree stared in openmouthed wonder at what they had “stolen.”
So were the other three hijackers up on the bridge. Sinja studied a sensor display, noting that the alien pod was slightly more than two meters in length: 212.46 centimeters long to be exact. Girth: 118.35 cm at its widest point. It had no markings of any kind, with a smooth, unbroken surface, just like an egg. She noticed no openings at all, not even a seam to indicate where a door might be. Gravdet indicated a mass of 98.12 kilograms, very light for an object its size, suggesting it was probably hollow. This gave credence to Mercer’s assertion that it was an escape pod―which, Sinja realized, meant aliens might be inside.
The sensors revealed little else about the object. Yet it appeared harmless enough, with no radioactive traces or energy emissions. Not a murmur on any communication frequency. The alien pod had been completely silent and passive thus far.
Mercer couldn’t take his eyes off the thing. “Notice how light doesn’t reflect off its surface, like it’s absorbing photons somehow. Reminds me of black jade. Has a very distinctive mineral look. Definitely not a metallic alloy, and no plastic or ceramic I’ve ever seen looks like that.”
Sinja noticed that despite its smooth, ovoid shape, the alien craft sat perfectly balanced on the landing pad. It scared her witless. She wanted no part of this―bringing it aboard is sheer idiocy―but with Mercer blackmailing her the only option was to go along. For now, until the prick lets down his guard. . .
Sinja could feel Datch watching her every move, silently pleading for her go-ahead signal to jump Mercer and put an end to this . . . lunacy. Oh, how she wanted to, but too risky―if Mercer blew the hyperdrive controls she and Datch would both go to prison, and that she couldn’t endure. So, reluctantly, she gave her stepbrother a discrete no-go gesture.
“I’d wager it has an organic composition,” Mercer said, “at least the exterior surface.” He was staring at a close-up image of the alien pod displayed on a monitor. “Probably a secreted resin that’s been polished to a mirror-smooth finish. I think we should run an X-ray scanner over it, see what’s in there.”
“Wait a frickin’ minute,” Sinja objected. “Irradiating it with X-rays might cause it to explode. That thing could be a bomb.”
Mercer looked thoughtful for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. If it were a bomb or some kind of weapon it would have gone off when the sats snared it. Nope, I’m fairly certain it’s an escape pod. What else could it be? If the thing were covered with sensor dishes or antennae that would indicate it might be a recon probe or something similar. But it doesn’t. Nope, it has a simple no-frills design that implies it’s something simple, like a cargo container or, as I firmly believe, an escape pod.” Mercer tapped his earplug, opening a comm channel to Dupree down in the docking bay. “Run a full X-ray scan on it. Then we’ll know for certain what’s inside.”
“Good idea,” Dupree answered. “A hard scan will give us some visuals to show prospective buyers the goods, so to speak. Maybe we’ll get an image of something alive in there. That’ll jack up the price.”
Sinja nervously watched a video feed of the docking bay as a meter-long, turtle-shaped automaton rose from its storage rack on silent anti-grav thrusters, gliding toward the alien pod. She recognized it as a type L-4 maintenance robot, equipped with a high-power X-ray scanner used to locate hull microfractures. Mercer was betting it would also reveal the interior of the alien craft.
The maintenance ’bot glided to a stop over the pod, hovering motionless. Sinja held her breath as its scanner activated. A fuzzy X-ray image appeared on one of the bridge monitors.
“Something’s in there all right.” Mercer pointed at a dark-gray splotch on the monitor. “Looks like two distinct shapes . . . one up front here, and one in the back.” He traced his finger around one of them. “They could be creatures, albeit small ones. This solid line here in between them looks a bulkhead. As for these dots and squiggly lines, the image is so distorted I can’t tell what they are.” He tapped open the comm channel to Dupree. “Hey, you got the autofocus switched off?”
“Doing my best.” Dupree sounded frustrated. “It’s absorbing X-rays like a sponge. Only a small fraction are getting through. Scanner’s at max penetration, too. We need to get a camera in there. I can drill a tiny hole and insert a worm probe. That’ll give us some good video of the interior.”
“Hmm . . .” Mercer studied the pod, rubbing his chin between thumb and forefinger as he thought about it. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“You must be frickin’ kidding me.” Sinja was about to lose it. Have these two idiots completely lost their minds! “Zapping that thing with X-rays is crazy enough, but drilling a hole in it is just insane! I thought you wanted to steal it, Mercer, not perform an autopsy on it. Be smart about this, not stupid and sorry.”
“Relax,” Mercer told her with an arrogant smile. “The ’bot isn’t going to slice it apart, just drill a small hole so we can peek inside. The docking bay is hermetically sealed, so there’s no risk of contamination. And we’ll vent the bay afterward, flushing any alien microbes or contaminants out into space. It’s perfectly safe.”
Sinja felt like she was arguing with a
wall. Hopeless no doubt, but she had to try. “Why take the chance? Lock that thing in a storage vault, then seal the docking bay so we can get the frick out of here. We’re hijacking an ore hauler, remember?” She gave Mercer a desperate look, trying to get through. “We don’t have time for this right now and you know it. Once the guard sats sent out that Priority One alert, every Imperium warship this side of the Sagittarius Spur will be vectoring here at max hyper. Once we sell this ship’s cargo to Chantur, you can do whatever you want with that pod. It’s all yours.”
Mercer gave her a crazed look, and Sinja knew at that moment he was beyond reason. Like a gambler addict at the high-stakes table, Mercer just had to throw the dice, even if he couldn’t cover his bet if the dice came up wrong. He needed to find out what was inside the alien pod, even if it lost him everything. Yep, Sinja had seen this behavior before, even used it to her advantage during a couple of heists.
“Look, we’ve got plenty of time,” Mercer explained. “Just want to take a quick peek inside, nothing more. At the first sign of trouble we’ll snare it back into space, so no worries. Like I said before, it has no detectable power source and no radioactivity, so it isn’t nuclear. And we know it’s not a bomb or alien warhead since it didn’t blow when the sats snared it. Looks like an escape pod with what I’d wager are two alien creatures inside, and they don’t build escape pods to explode. Nothing moving in there, so they’re probably in suspended animation. We won’t even touch them, just want to see what they look like. Who knows, they could be an alien version of Adam and Eve, off to populate a new world.”
Sinja scoffed. “So you abduct them to sell to the highest bidder? Wonderful.”
Mercer ignored her jab, his attention focused solely on the alien pod. “Go ahead, Dupree. Let’s see what’s inside.”
Sinja scowled at him but kept quiet.
Down in the docking bay, the robot extended the second of four double-elbowed mechanical arms. Equipped with a high-speed industrial drill, it swung toward the pod.
Sinja stared helplessly as the drill spun up to full speed and slowly came down, its polycarbonate tip spinning into alien shell. Black flecks sprayed in all directions. The drill broke through suddenly, penetrating, and the robot quickly retracted it. A puff of alien air squirted out the tiny 1.5mm hole.
Sinja cringed, almost afraid to watch, but the pod sat on the landing pad same as before, seemingly unperturbed by the drill’s intrusive actions.
“Told you,” Mercer bragged, taking delight in her nervousness. “See, no worries, just like I said.”
The robot analyzed the escaping air. The results were relayed to a bridge monitor, revealing an atmospheric mix of nitrogen [77.4%], oxygen [21.1%], argon [0.7%] with trace amounts of carbon dioxide, helium, and a few other elements. The sample also indicated a comfortable amount of water vapor [0.31%]. No dangerous microbes or toxins were detected. Humid, Earthlike, quite breathable by people, in fact.
Sinja whistled when she read that. “You realize if there’s anything alive in there, it breathes the same air as us. Such a probability is astronomically low.” Only a miniscule fraction, fewer than 2% of the alien life forms discovered thus far, breathed the same atmosphere as people.
From the maintenance robot’s flat underside emerged a slender, worm-like probe used to inspect the innards of heavy machinery. Like a thread sliding in through the eye of a needle, it descended into the tiny drill hole.
A monitor displayed a video feed direct from the probe’s optical scanner. Sinja saw deep-gray shadows against a black background, nothing at all recognizable. It was too dark inside.
Dupree took care of the problem, adjusting the scanner settings. “Switching to thermal imager.”
The shadows turned red and orange, with some blue hues here and there, giving a much better view of the pod’s interior. Even so, they still saw nothing recognizable. Just blobs of color. Dupree slowly rotated the probe, intending to turn it 360 degrees to give a full sweep of the interior. A bulbous shape hanging from what looked like an umbilical cord came into view, and Dupree froze the probe to take a better look. Sinja realized it might not be “hanging” at all, but could be jutting out from a wall, or even up from the floor, depending on the pod’s orientation. Its featureless outer shell made it impossible for them to tell top from bottom, left from right. The pod might be upside-down on the landing pad for all they knew.
Mercer shrieked, pointing frantically at a monitor. The pod was changing color, turning a venomous red around the drill hole. A thick, brown goo began oozing out. “The probe’s irritating it!” he screamed at Dupree. “Take it out!”
Working fast, Dupree input the command, causing the probe to retreat up and out of the hole. The robot withdrew to a safe distance. Dupree got ready to snare the pod back into space.
Everyone had eyes fixed on monitors as the alien goo hardened, plugging the drill hole. The pod changed back to its original black-as-space camouflage coloring, and Sinja couldn’t even tell where the hole had been.
Nothing else happened. They all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Please stop this, Mercer,” Sinja pleaded. “Snare that thing into a storage vault, lock it down tight, and leave it alone. Please.”
“All right.” Mercer agreed there had been enough excitement for one day. “Dupree, snare it into a vault and lock it down tight. Then vent the bay, seal the space door, and get ready for hyper.”
“First smart thing you’ve said all day,” Sinja sniped.
Mercer didn’t reply, although Sinja noticed his face was paler than usual. Beads of sweat dotted his brow, too. So maybe the scare that alien pod had sent through them all might smarten him up. Sinja hoped so, because they still had a long way to go before they reached the rendezvous point with Chantur, where they’d sell Argo’s cargo. After that, she’d deal with Mercer.
Down in the docking bay, a pale-blue snare beam shot out from a ceiling mount and grabbed the alien pod, lifting it a meter off the floor. The snare then began levitating the pod sideways at a cautious 2.5 kph pace. Dupree carefully maneuvered the alien object around strapped down storage crates, past Argo’s shuttle, finally tucking it into a thick-walled storage vault. After Dupree softly lowered the pod onto the floor the snare flickered off. He sent a robot in to put chock wedges around the pod for stability during transit. Once it left, the vault’s armored door sung shut, heavy lock bolts slid into place, and a military-grade containment field snapped on.
Argo had two of these vaults, used to store demolition nukes, antimatter power cores, or any other volatile cargo. The alien pod was now locked up safe and secure.
Sinja sank into a chair, relieved. As usual, she’d been worried something terrible would happen. It just might work out after all, she thought, in spite of Mercer’s outrageous theft.
She even managed a little smile when Argo sped past a guardian satellite, exiting the defense perimeter. The jump into hyperspace was only 210 minutes away.
Inside the Scout Pod
A whirring noise awoke Stynx from a blissful hibernation. He opened his eyes and looked up.
Just in time to see the drill bore in and break through, piercing the pod’s outer shell. The drill quickly withdrew, leaving a tiny hole. Seconds later the probe entered, sliding in like a snake into a burrow.
Stynx lay perfectly still atop the insulator bench, watching the probe as it slunk in. It paused a moment, then bent toward the forward bulkhead of his tiny recorder’s nook. It began to rotate, as if searching for him. Even though the pod was in total darkness, the infrared vision of Stynx’s two peripheral eyes allowed him to see it clearly.
The probe froze when it caught sight of the communication bulb, the two devices just a few hand widths apart, seeming to stare at one another. Suddenly the probe withdrew as the pod’s self-seal mechanism activated, causing sticky, adhesive gel to ooze in from the surrounding shell; this filled the tiny hole and formed an airtight patch as the gel hardened.
Sty
nx kept a keen watch for more holes but none appeared. Instead he felt the pod begin moving. It was a slow, sideways movement, and he noticed there was no longer the weightlessness of space; instead he felt a constant downward pull of gravity: about 1 g Stynx estimated, the same he felt inside Tor Nest. Had the pod been taken to a planet while he slept? Am I now on an alien world?
Unless he ventured out from the pod he had no way of knowing, and that Stynx wouldn’t do.
No, he must stay inside, clinging to life as long as he could.
Argo
Like any imaginative twelve-year-old boy, Ritch already knew how to unlock his bedroom door from the inside. This time he had his dad’s password, a novelty for the youth, so he used that instead, entering it on the wall-mounted keypad. Once the door slid open, Ritch made certain the coast was clear, then turned right and took off down the corridor at a brisk yet quiet pace, barefoot since his shoes sometimes made squishy noises on the floor.
He reached a stairwell, went in, and quickly descended to the lower deck. The coast was clear here, too, so he jogged down the corridor, turned left, with the doorway leading to the shipboard AI just ahead.
Ritch knew he needed to be quick about this―Argo would go hyper soon, and that he must prevent. As for the ankle bomb still locked around his leg, he would worry about that later.
The doorway into the shipboard AI compartment was locked, as expected, prompting him to use his dad’s password once again. The door slid open with a soft hiss, and he went inside.
Ritch had only been here a few times before, helping his dad run routine maintenance and diagnostic tests. It was a square compartment some six meters across. Covering the walls were control panels and instrument banks lined with readouts, dials, and glowing indicator lights. In the middle of the room stood a meter-high, polished-chrome pillar that supported Shepard’s environment sphere.
Ritch went to the nearest control panel and studied it a moment. Nope, wrong one. He sidestepped to the next panel in line. Not finding what he was looking for there, either, the boy shook his head before continuing on until he found the power control panel. He tapped its touchscreen. Once it flickered to life, Ritch input his dad’s password into the digital keypad. The master control screen came on. Following Professor Tottle’s instructions, he tapped a series of screen icons in a specific order, switching off all power to the AI environment sphere, and hence, to Shepard within.
The Sphere Imperium: Book Two of the Intentional Contact Trilogy Page 8