Far From Home: The Complete Second Series (Far From Home 13-15)

by Tony Healey

  "I know. I read the file on them. You really think they did that? Left this out here in the middle of nowhere in the hope no-one would stumble upon it?"

  "It's feasible. At least it is to me. They were a powerful race, Captain. But they were dying. Their day had come and gone. I think the Enigma was their way of ensuring they got another one."

  She took a few notes on her own data tablet.

  Gentry folded his arms in front of his chest. "How much do you know about Galileo, Captain?" he asked.

  Jessica shrugged. "Not that much, I'm afraid."

  The scientist smiled. "That's perfectly fine. Do you have time for a history lesson? I promise to give you the digest version."

  Jessica nodded her consent. "By all means, go ahead," she told Dr. Gentry.

  Gentry poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher in the middle of the table. He took several sips before continuing.

  "Galileo was already a noted astronomer, but it was when he discovered Murano glass that his abilities reached new heights. With the almost crystal clarity of that glass, he was able to make new, more powerful lenses and dramatically improve the capability of his telescopes. And if memory serves, he managed to achieve a magnification of twenty times," Dr. Gentry told her. "This allowed him unprecedented views of the night sky. And in January of 1610 he made observations that would change astronomy -- and science -- forever."

  "And what was that?" King asked him.

  "Well, when he pointed his telescope toward Jupiter, he observed for the first time a line of four distinct lights in front of it. Over time he noted that the lights changed their position, and correctly hypothesised that they were moons in orbit of Jupiter. Now what you have to remember is that up until that point, there were two acceptable models of the universe."

  "Interesting," Jessica said earnestly as she now poured herself some water. "And fascinating, to think that this was once modern science. Astronomy at the very edge of sophistication."

  "It is fascinating, isn't it? So yes, there were two," Gentry said. "The Ptolemy model, whereby the Earth stood at the centre of everything. The entire universe literally revolved around the Earth. Copernicus refuted this theory and claimed that, at far as our own solar system was concerned, everything orbited the sun. After all, the Greek for planet is 'wanderer.'"

  "How was it decided that the Copernicus view of the universe was the correct one?" she asked.

  "For that, we come back to Galileo. By observing Jupiter, and proving that Jupiter had its own moons in orbit, he was able to substantiate Copernicus's theory. He published his research in a slim volume entitled Starry Messenger. In fact I have a copy in storage on Station 6."

  "The church at the time must have taken a dim view of Galileo's findings," Jessica pointed out.

  Gentry nodded. "Yes, it was the cause of some scandal. However, about a hundred years later, we had significantly advanced equipment with which to prove that he was right. We were able to observe stellar parallax – which is what Galileo himself had seen when he watched Jupiter and its moons interact with one another – the shift in the relative position of the stars and the Earth as we orbit the Sun. It's a shame it came too late. I'm sure he would have enjoyed seeing his theory proven."

  "Great minds are rarely appreciated in their own time," King said.

  "Indeed," Gentry said. "Copernicus came up with the idea . . . but Galileo proved it. That is science. Everything that has happened since is due in part to Galileo and another fellow called Kepler, who showed that the orbits of the planets were not circular but ellipses. We owe the very fact that we're here, right now, to those two men."

  "Amazing, isn't it?" Jessica said with an incredulous shake of her head. "Look at how far we've come."

  "Galileo once said 'The laws of the universe are written in the language of mathematics,'" Gentry said, moving on with his tale. "And perhaps as a footnote to my less than concise history lesson, Galileo was known for making several other discoveries during his lifetime. He proved that objects of different sizes and weights fall at the same speed. The old wives tale of Galileo dropping a canon ball and a feather from the top of a building is wildly inaccurate. He also proved that it was the density of an object, and not its shape, that determined whether or not it would float."

  "You seem to be somewhat in awe of the man," the Captain said.

  Dr. Gentry laughed. "I guess I am. As a man of science, I do not see how I cannot be."

  She frowned. "Not to be rude, but how does all this tie in with the Enigma? Or have I just missed the point?"

  "You mean, 'was this all just chat?'" the Doctor asked.

  Jessica laughed, but nodded all the same.

  "I did have a point," he said. "And it ties into what we were discussing before."

  "Oh?" she said.

  Gentry stood and walked over to the nearest porthole. Beyond lay the Enigma. With his back to her, hands in his pockets, he spoke in a far softer voice.

  "I am often in awe of that time, when the first pioneers in the field attempted to understand the immensity of the heavens," he said. "It seems almost romantic to me, that age of discovery of innovation. And it isn't just nostalgia; we're still looking. Even now, on ships such as this, we're still star watching and dreaming of what lies beyond in that starry sea we call the cosmos . . ."

  He turned back around, and in the flash of the overhead lights, Jessica was almost certain his eyes glistened. Here was a man who, on previous occasions, had proven to be erratic, unpredictable and a certifiable crackpot. And yet he stood before her now, a wise man, a scientist, a man visibly moved by his field of study, and all those who'd come before him.

  Her opinion of Wilf Gentry had changed.

  "We do not know all that is out there," he said, his voice wistful as he continued on. "We can imagine, and theorise, but if there's one universal constant, it is that the truth will always be far stranger than anything we could possibly imagine. Captain King, I have no definitive answers for you. You have my theories, my speculation. My thoughts on just what the Enigma is, what we may yet still find over there on that mysterious time capsule of a world. But what none of us can ever escape is the same sense of wonder humanity has always felt when they've gazed up at the stars. It is the unknown, and there is no way of predicting what you will find when you venture forth into it. No matter how well informed you are, there's no telling what might happen. Surprises always find a way of presenting themselves . . ."

  46.

  Selena Walker and Gary Belcher stood in awe. What could only be the power core, or the reactor, of the Enigma shone like a miniature sun before them. It was a sparkling cascade of energy trapped within a hexagonal chamber. The chamber was completely transparent, and as much as the light it exuded was blinding, it also had a mesmerising quality. They couldn't stop looking.

  "Now we know how it moves," Belcher said.

  "Yeah," Walker agreed.

  "It looks like Christmas," Belcher said.

  Selena shook her head. "It looks like Heaven. In a bottle."

  Being so close to it made the hairs on their arms, and at the back of their necks, stand on end. It hurt their eyes. And yet it was so entrancing . . .

  "Walker, come in," a voice said. It snapped them both out of it.

  Selena spoke into her comm. unit. "Yes, this is Walker."

  "Come find us. You have got to see this," Rayne said.

  "We found something pretty interesting here, too," Selena said, though she was more than happy to get some distance from it – whatever it was.

  47.

  "Look," Rayne said as Gary Belcher and Selena Walker approached from down the corridor. Olivia and Lieutenant Jackson stood directly in front of a display showing several suits of armour, old fashioned sword-like weapons. A kind of lance, and something that could only be a whip of some sort.

  "Very peculiar," Walker said. She noted the design of the armour, too. "It's almost ceremonial."

  "What do you mean?" Jackson asked. />
  "You know, something you might wear to a special occasion, or a coming of age test. It almost looks –" Selena started to say.

  "– feudal," Jackson interjected.

  "Yes," Walker said. "Definitely feeling the warrior vibe with all of this."

  Olivia started to walk off. "And that's not all of it."

  The others followed her into a large oval room, crammed from floor to ceiling with consoles and displays. Not one seat in the whole place. There was no display screen, like most Union vessels, but some kind of holodisplay emitter at the centre of the room.

  "This has to be a bridge," Belcher said. "Just looking at the layout, the design. It's clearly intended to orchestrate events."

  "If it's not a bridge then it's a war room," Jackson said.

  "There was a class of Union runners that had bridges like this," Belcher explained. "Back a century or more. They were like the old submarines from Earth's history. You ever seen one of those things?"

  Olivia nodded. "Yeah in a museum one time."

  "Well, they had something similar. Only it was a cube with displays on each side, and that sat in the middle of the bridge," Belcher told her. "But still, very much like this."

  "So this is where they control the Enigma from," Walker said.

  "Or would've," Olivia said. "If they were here . . ."

  48.

  "Well, I won't be too long," Dana Oriz said as she hefted the sack containing the scorpion up off the deck.

  "They're already at the other side of the airlock, waiting," Chang told her.

  "Right. See you soon," Dana said and donned her helmet. Lieutenant Chang watched her walk off toward one of the elevators that would take her to the airlock.

  *

  Olivia Rayne answered her comm. and smiled the moment she heard Chang's voice.

  "Lisa!"

  Jackson threw her a strange look, so she went to one side and spoke in a lower voice. Selena and Gary had gone back out to get another look at the swords and armour.

  "Lisa, I didn't know you were going to call," Olivia said. "Boy oh boy, have we found some stuff over here."

  "Thought I'd surprise you," Chang said. "Doctor Oriz has just gone up to the airlock. They're taking that creature aboard now to study."

  "Oh. Will you be all right over there on your own like that?"

  "Sure. They've shown us no interest. We're going to try and get some decent footage of them, though, once Dana comes back."

  "Good. We're having a storm here."

  "Same as what we had here in C-1," Chang said. "It'll pass."

  Olivia took a deep breath. "Lisa, I –"

  "Yep, I know," Chang told her. "Me too."

  "See you soon?" Olivia asked.

  "You bet, Liv. Even if I have to travel down there in that storm," Chang said. And do me a favour, will you?"

  "Anything."

  "Stay safe."

  *

  When Dana returned to C-1, she and Commander Chang followed the first scorpion they could find, filming its every move. They watched as it cleaned every surface it came into contact with, using its mouth. With its claws it picked up anything out of place. A ball of dust blew in front of it, and the two women watched in surprise as it neatly plucked it out of the air and slipped the dust ball into its mouth.

  Yet again, they observed as the scorpions disappeared into the floor, and yet were unable to open the hatches themselves, let alone get a real glimpse of what was down there.

  "This is the skin, and that's the flesh underneath," Dana stated after they watched yet another of the scorpion creatures do a disappearing act on them.

  "Then in this case the flesh truly does crawl," Chang was quick to answer.

  49.

  Dr. Clayton removed his gloves. Jessica looked at the milky, blue fluid splattered up the front of his apron. The scorpion lay on its back, legs splayed out, underbelly cut open.

  "So?" she asked him.

  Clayton took a deep breath. "Far as I can tell, it's biomechanical."

  "Biomechanical?"

  He nodded. "Yes. There are parts of it that are wholly organic, side by side with mechanical components. And there's parts of it that seem . . . well, a bit of both. As I said, biomechanical. A melding of organic tissues and mechanical parts."

  "Right. So this thing's not strictly a robot."

  Clayton laughed. "Far from it." He indicated the blood on his apron.

  Jessica watched as he tossed his gloves, apron and face mask in the waste, then followed him into his office.

  "Have you ever seen anything like that before?" she asked him.

  Clayton sat down. Behind them in the medical bay, the nurses dealt with the corpse of the scorpion. It would be frozen and put into storage until they could get back to Station 6.

  "Of course, there are replicants, but they're not strictly biomechanical," Clayton explained. "Artificially created beings, modified to have certain traits. This is different, though."

  "Yes. These are, as you say, a mix. Do you know if the Union has ever tried such a thing?" Jessica asked him.

  Clayton's eyes fixed on her own for a moment. "It's not public knowledge, and I'm not even sure I should be telling you this . . ."

  "Go on," she urged him.

  Clayton sat forward, his voice lowered to a near whisper. "As you know, I have contacts here and there. It's one of the reasons I was able to get hold of your new meds. Call it a kind of black market, but not quite. It's hard to explain. Anyway, years ago I got talking to a contact of mine. Said he'd seen some things. Stumbled upon a Union facility on a backwater planet."

  "Which planet?"

  Clayton shook his head. "He didn't say. Only that it was one of those frontier jobs. You know, far away from everything. They live practically a wild west existence in those places."

  "So what did he see?"

  Clayton's eyes were heavy. "Jess, he told me he saw an army of Union soldiers on manoeuvres. But they weren't human and they weren't replicants. He said they were . . . something else. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it sounded an awful lot like what I've just cut open on that table. The traits he described to me would fall in line with something containing organic and mechanical body parts."

  Jessica let that sink in. "I wonder if that's why we've really been sent here."

  "What do you mean?" Clayton asked.

  "It's probably nothing. Just a line of thought. Anyway, what traits do you mean? What did he tell you?" Jessica asked him, putting what she'd been thinking about to the back of her mind for now.

  "He said he observed one of them leap over twenty metres into the air, then fire at a series of ground based targets before he landed," Clayton told her. "Another got shot by live rounds, in the chest, and yet continued to fight on. Understandably, as soon as he could, my contact fled the area and forgot about what he'd seen. That is, of course, till he'd had a drink."

  "And you don't think it was the drink talking?" she asked the Doctor, although she knew in her heart it wasn't. Again, there was something nagging at the back of her mind.

  Clayton shook his head once. "No. He saw it."

  "I won't repeat this, Doctor," Jessica assured him. She stood. Clayton looked up at her.

  "Jess, what are we doing developing soldiers like that? I thought the Union's days of warmongering were over."

  "I did too," she said, and left. On her way out, she spared the scorpion one last look as it was pushed into a heavy bag for freezing. Then she left the medical bay behind and headed for the bridge.

  *

  On her way up there, Jessica thought about the circumstances under which they'd been sent to investigate the Enigma. Grimshaw had been in such a hurry to get the Defiant shipshape and ready to go. They barely had time to catch their breath after a full year in the galactic wilds before they were sent straight back out on a secret mission.

  She detoured to her quarters and called up the file on the Enigma. She accessed the data from the probe that had first detected it
s presence. Her suspicions proved correct. Command had had possession of the data for six months. Meaning, they'd known the Enigma was out there all that time. And yet, they'd made no effort to make a rendezvous with it.

  Why?

  And there was something else, too. It nagged at her. She couldn't remember exactly what it was, so she scanned through reports from the time the Enigma had been sighted. Her eyes widened as she happened across the very thing she'd been trying to remember. And then, on from that, aerial footage of a planet's surface.

  She had a theory. But she needed a sounding board. Jessica called up to the bridge and requested Commander Greene come to her quarters immediately. Not long after, he was at her door.

  "Emergency?" he asked, visibly a little out of breath from his sprint.

  "Sorry, Del, I didn't mean to startle you. No, not an emergency. Something important, though. Sit down," she said. "Water? I'm having one."

  "Good. Let's drink water together then," he said and sat. "So what is this?"

  Jessica poured each of them a glass of water, handed Greene his, and went through the whole thing. She told him about Clayton's story – and swore him to secrecy – then explained to him about the telemetry from the deep space probe Command had been holding onto for six months.

  "So why the rush?" Greene asked.

  "This is what I'm coming to. And it's only a theory, I just want to know if it's nuts or not," King said.

  "Go on . . ."

  She licked her lips. "Just suppose the Union has been working on resurrecting old Namar technology from all that time ago. God knows they were ahead of the curve in most respects. What if they've found a way of reverse engineering it, but it's not perfect?"

  "Yeah. I read there's lots of that old Namarian stuff about, and maybe they found relics from that time we've not heard about," Greene said.

  "So, something happens. Such as three months ago. An experimental starship is stolen from Starbase 19 and simply disappears. They've yet to track it down."