by Tony Healey
"Uh, I don't think we're in a habitat exactly," he said.
Lieutenant Jackson was the next to find that his eyesight had returned. "In the name of . . ." he managed to mumble as he gazed at what was there before them.
32.
Just as Captain King had said, the Enigma was full of surprises.
A giant axle ran through the middle of C-2, at least half a kilometre thick. Along its length were lights similar in design to those in C-1, but very small. Due to that, there were a great number of them all over the giant axle, and they reminded Jessica somewhat of Christmas tree lights. Every conceivable inch of surface area within the cylinder seemed to be covered in some form of tech or other. There were what could only be star fighters. Even two ships about half the size of the Defiant nestled amongst the fighters and weaponry.
"This is no generation ship," Selena Walker said as she gazed up. "And it isn't a simple habitat, either."
"No," Jessica said. "This is a ship of war."
*
"I can't believe it," Belcher said. "So much tech in here. It'll take an age just to go through it."
"I don't think we have that long, Mister, but I'll try," Jessica said, opening a channel with the Defiant. "This is the Captain. Please have the Defiant on standby. We have discovered a vast array of weaponry in here and are about to catalogue what we can."
"Understood, Captain," the voice on the other end answered.
"If you see any change whatsoever in the Enigma, notify me. Captain out."
Jessica closed the channel.
*
The rain and hail ceased. No sooner than it had begun, the severe weather had stopped. When Chang, Davies and Dr. Gentry stepped outside, they found it wet but warm. The clouds had dissipated to a thin, wispy layer of strata. The thunder and lightning had gone, too.
"It was as if the ship cleared its throat after being woken up after so long," Davies said.
Dr. Gentry laughed. "Yes! That's it! The mighty giant wakes, stretches, has a good cough. Now all is well."
Chang detected movement to her left. Her head snapped about, her hand simultaneously grabbing for the gun in its holster. "Quiet," she ordered.
The other two followed her line of sight. There was definitely something moving out there, about twenty metres away.
"What is it?" Davies whispered.
"Stay here," Chang said and she edged forward. Using the houses as cover, she made her way forward. There it was again. Directly ahead. A rush of something grey, so fast it was a near blur. A now she could hear it, too. A clitter-clatter sound on the wet stone floor.
She thumbed her sidearm off of safety and held it in front of her, at the ready. The sound again. The clitter-clatter of claws. Big heavy claws. Chang tried to shake the image, but it wouldn't go. She pictured some atrocity awaiting her. Her heart thudded in her ears and she swallowed, her throat dry as dust.
Chang silently stepped out from behind one of the houses and found herself less than six feet away from it. She gripped the gun with both hands, the barrel aimed directly at it.
The creature turned to look at her, its eyes on stalks that wavered left and right. The round black eyes at the ends twitched hideously. It studied her for several seconds, then scuttled away, seemingly uninterested. Chang opened a comm. channel to the Captain and tried not to let the nerves make her voice sound shaky as she reported what they'd found.
33.
"Life?" King asked on the other end.
"Yes Captain. I'm going to relay visual back to the Defiant. It looks like a scorpion. Dull grey in colour. About a metre tall, six legs, with kind of hooked feet. Two clawed arms at the front," Chang said.
"Has it seen you?"
"Yes. It looked at me, then disregarded my presence. I wonder if it's decided I'm not a threat," Chang told her. "Though at the time I did have my sidearm pointed at it."
"Understandably so," King said. "Where is it now?"
"Moving away. I'm following, but at a distance."
"Good. Commander, ensure you have Doctor Gentry and Mister Davies there with you. Stay together. There are probably more."
"Yes Captain, I'll signal them to meet me now."
"See what you can find out, Commander. And make sure you include all of us in your feed to the Defiant. One other thing," King said. "You said it resembles a scorpion. Well, from what you've described so far it sounds more like a lobster than anything else."
"Oh yes, indeed, very much like a lobster," Chang explained. "It's the giant pincer on the back end that makes it look like a scorpion."
"I see. A weapon of some kind?"
"I don't believe so," Chang said. "I think it's more of an appendage. A third arm."
"Okay, Commander. Get that feed up so we can see it for ourselves. And if you need any of us in there, just give the word and we'll be with you on the double."
Chang closed the channel, then signalled both Dr. Gentry and Peter Davies. "Boys, you need to get here fast. We have contact."
34.
The video feed streamed simultaneously from Commander Chang's unit to the Defiant, Team One and Team Three. Everyone on the Defiant's bridge watched as Chang approached the grey creature she'd dubbed a "scorpion." It sensed her presence, stopped and turned to face her. Chang rummaged in her pack for a ration. She pulled out a packet of crackers, broke one in half and tossed it at the ground in front of the scorpion. It's eyes lowered on their stems to look at the food, then it picked the half cracker up with one pincer. For such a big appendage, its movements were swift and light. The cracker did not so much as crumble under the creature's grip. In a curious gesture, it lifted the cracker up to its eyes and looked it over before putting it to its mouth. Small teeth took a bite, but the cracker evidently wasn't appealing in any way.
It soon spat the mouthful of dry cracker out, put the rest back where it had found it, and continued on its way.
"As you can see," Chang said to the camera. "It's as if we aren't here. It's not interested."
Team Two followed the scorpion for more than ten minutes as it made its way through C-1, in a perfectly straight line. It ended up at a barely visible mark on the stone floor. As it drew close, the floor opened up to reveal a hatchway. The scorpion disappeared into it, and the hatch closed directly after.
Davies stepped forward, tapped a foot against the spot where there'd previously been a gaping hole. The hatch didn't budge. In fact it was so inconspicuous that no-one would have noticed it had they not seen it open just then.
"There is evidently some kind of network under the ground to facilitate these creatures," Dr. Gentry reasoned off camera. With something to occupy his mind, and ignite his curiosity, Gentry seemed calmer. More stable than he had before.
"Whatever they are," Chang said.
Davies looked up and pointed off to the left. "Look! Another two."
About fifty metres away, two of the scorpions were scaling one of the box houses. Chang zoomed in. "They look like they're testing the structure somehow."
"Yes, that would make sense," Dr. Gentry said.
"What d'you mean?" Davies asked.
Gentry smiled. "Have you not worked it out yet? They are not a part of this vessel's defences, else they would have attacked us by now. No, they are something far different."
"And what's that?" Chang asked.
"Maintenance."
35.
"You're sure it won't be seen as hostile, Doctor? Captain King asked Gentry after she'd ridden back to C-1 on the tram.
Dr. Gentry shook his head. "I'm certain that whatever controls have released these beings into C-1 has no more intelligence than a calculator. It's an automated system. The habitat has been revived, the weather permutations have settled into a nice rhythm . . . it's another part of the Enigma coming back to life. The scorpion creatures are just another stage."
"Well, if you're certain. I don't want to instigate something we'll regret later," she told him.
It had been Dr. Gentry's idea
to trap one of the scorpions somehow and have it taken aboard the Defiant for study. Commander Chang hadn't been convinced, however, and Jessica had travelled back to C-1 along with Dana Oriz specifically to iron it out with Dr. Gentry.
"I agree with Dr. Gentry," Dana told her. "There's nothing intelligent about any of this. Whatever these things are, they're more or less automated. Or have very limited awareness. They're on this ship to do a specific job and I think that's it."
"But," Gentry said, one finger upheld in front of him like an exclamation point. "Examining them could answer a lot of questions for us, and provide a unique insight into the Namar themselves."
Jessica weighed the options, then gave her consent. "I take full responsibility for this. Do it. But try and get it onto the Defiant alive."
"We'll do our best, Captain," Chang said.
36.
Back on Earth, centuries before, it had been called a lasso. And the knot Lieutenant Jackson tied was not much different to what the cowboys of humanity's childhood would have used. However he'd been taught how to tie it on one of the frontier worlds, back on the dusty colony he'd come from.
A lot of the Union's finest came from the hind end of space. Young men and women eager to make their mark. Serve a greater good.
Captain Jessica King thought about the way she'd been taken as a simple orphan and moulded into command material. Little had she known at the time that the very man doing the moulding was in fact her real Father.
She watched Jackson approach one of the scorpions, turning the cord hoop over his head like a helicopter blade.
"Who taught you, Lieutenant?" Jessica asked him.
Jackson kept his attention focused on the scorpion, gradually creeping closer and closer, all the while getting ready to throw the cord and snare it. "My Dad," he said over his shoulder.
Makes sense, she thought to herself. I learned a lot from mine.
Her thoughts briefly skipped to her Mother. The woman who'd brought her into the world, whom she'd never met. After watching the video her alternate had recorded for her, informing her about the fact Captain Singh had in fact been her biological Father. And telling her about Hawk/Dollar, the steadily developing psychosis of Swogger . . . after all that, she sat back and contemplated all she'd been told. It occurred to her that not even her other self had known anything about their Mother. Alt-Jessica hadn't so much as mentioned her.
According to her birth certificate, kept on the Union database, her Mother had died in childbirth.
It seemed strange to her that she'd always thought herself an orphan, but that hadn't been the case. She'd been in the company of her Father the whole time and didn't know it. How might she have acted if she'd known the truth? Would it have changed her relationship with Andrew Singh?
Probably.
Now, she truly was an orphan. The offspring of dead parents. One she'd known, and called friend. As for Mother . . . she didn't even know her name.
This is my family, she thought. Always has been. And now I'm the parent.
Jackson made his move on the unsuspecting scorpion. The lasso slipped free, landed neatly over the tail of the creature, then the Lieutenant gave the cord a swift yank. The knot tightened, the cord caught against the scorpion's tail, and it slid along the floor. It's eyes swivelled about to get a look at its captor.
"Careful, Lieutenant," Chang said. She stood close by, visibly tense at what was taking place. Jessica got the impression the Commander didn't fully agree with it.
That was fine. Not all of her orders were part of some democratic process of agreement and rejection. It was actually quite liberating, being the Captain.
She didn't have to answer for herself. They had to trust that she would make the right, informed call. And she usually did.
"Now what?" Jackson asked. He was reeling the scorpion in towards him. Its legs scraped along the stone-like floor as it tried to escape. Its claws attempted to grip the cord. "It'll get loose!"
"Bag it," Jessica told Chang. The Commander got close, a sack from their survival pack open and at the ready. Jackson steered the creature close to the waiting sack, and Chang bagged the animal.
The scorpion struggled for several seconds, thrashing within the sack. Chang closed it up, and stepped back. The scorpion continued to fight, the sack jittering about on the floor.
"This isn't going to work," King said.
Dr. Gentry stepped forward. "Commander, open the bag, would you?"
Chang looked from Gentry to Jessica. The Captain nodded her consent.
Chang opened the sack, and the scorpion scuttled backwards out of it.
Dr. Gentry swiftly pulled Chang's sidearm from her holster and before any of them could stop him from doing so, he aimed the gun at the scorpion's head and fired.
*
"My God!" Dana shouted in surprise as the shot echoed in C-1.
Lieutenant Jackson had Dr. Gentry on the floor in seconds. It took Jessica to yell at Jackson for him to ease up and get off of the Doctor.
"Lieutenant! Back off! Come on," she ordered. "Calm down!"
Davies walked Jackson away from the situation so he could calm down as Jessica dealt with Dr. Gentry. As the older man got to his feet, dusting himself off, Captain King grabbed him and got in his face.
"If you EVER try something like that again, I will have you locked in the brig till we return to Starbase 6. Do you hear me?"
Gentry nodded. "It had to be done, Captain. I saw no other course of action."
She let him go, turned to Commander Chang. "Get it in the bag, and call through for someone to come collect it from the airlock."
"Aye," Chang said.
"As for you, Doctor," Jessica said, facing Gentry again. "Consider yourself warned. Next time I won't get Jackson to back off."
"I -- I -- understand. I'm sorry," Gentry said, back to the stammering misfit he'd been before. As much as they'd been shocked by his action, the Doctor himself looked shaken by the way he'd been pinned to the ground.
Jessica turned and left for C-2 along with Lieutenant Jackson and Dana Oriz, eager not to have to look at him any longer – at least until she'd calmed down a bit herself.
*
Selena Walker answered her comm. to be met with a familiar Texan drawl on the other end.
"Guess who, sweetheart?"
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, I don't know. Who could it be? Who else aboard the Defiant sounds like a mock cattle rustler?"
"Ouch, darlin'. You really know how to kick a guy where it hurts."
Selena smiled. "One of my specialities. Nut cracking."
"Maybe you can demonstrate some time . . ." Dollar said.
"Get off the air!" she said and broke into laughter. "Anyway, what're you after?"
She walked away from the others so she could get some privacy. Though they couldn't hear Dollar on the other end, they could hear her responses. Already, there'd been a few raised eyebrows at her mention of cracking nuts.
"Do I have to be after somethin' just to hear yuh angelic voice?"
"You old smoothie," she said.
"Thanks," Dollar said. "Just thought I'd check, see if yer okay."
"Yes. I'm all right. We had a bit of drama over here a couple of minutes ago, but nothing too interesting. The Captain dealt with it," Selena told him.
"Whoever it was, I feel sorry for 'em if the Cap got involved," Dollar said, followed by a high pitched whistle that made her ears ring. "I was on my way down to the hangar . . ."
"To work on your baby," she said matter-of-factly.
"Her name's Dragonfly," Dollar corrected her. "And I've nearly got her done."
"Good. I hope you'll take me on a ride when I get back," Selena said.
Dollar sighed on the other end. "I hate bein' apart."
"We're not. Don't go soppy on me. I'll be back soon. In the meantime, you'll just have to . . . play with your spanner," she quipped.
Dollar laughed. "That's what I love about yuh, darlin', you got sass."
"Love yuh too."
*
"Understood, Captain," Commander Greene said from the captain's chair. "We're monitoring Team Two. I'll let you know if Gentry shows any sign of acting out again."
"Good. How's the Defiant?"
"Same as before," Greene said. He turned at the sound of someone walking onto the bridge. It was the Chief, carrying two cups of coffee. "She's in good shape."
Now he wasn't so sure he was only talking about the ship . . .
"Okay. I'm sure she's in capable hands. Captain out."
Chief Meryl Gunn handed the Commander his coffee. "There you are. Thought you could use this."
"It's been a long shift," he admitted.
"Yeah and you should have had a rest hours ago. But you're not to be argued with. So the only option is caffeine."
Commander Greene threw a sly grin. "You trying to make me hyper?"
The Chief gave him a pat on the shoulder as she left the bridge. "Honey, you're always hyper. The coffee's to calm you down."
He watched her go, his eyes taking in the wiggle of her bottom in her overalls. Greene sipped his coffee. The woman was a temptress . . . that was for sure.
"Okay people, let's try simulating a coolant leak this time. See how you all fare," he ordered. They'd already completely twenty simulated scenarios. Anything to break the monotony.
"I'm loving these drills . . ." Banks said.
"Insubordination will result in a visit to engineering, Mister Banks," Greene warned him. "And believe you me, that woman does not take prisoners."
A couple of the bridge hands stifled a chuckle, but a cautionary glare from the Commander stopped the laughter dead in its tracks.
"Let's begin . . ."
37.
"So, what surface area are we looking at in here?" King asked.
Belcher looked at his surroundings in C-2. "It's exactly the same as the other two, by the looks of things. And I'm sure the readings from the probes made it that way too."