Yet even in her subconscious, Erin could not understand what the words meant, and she was wary of submerging still further into memory. She had fought her entire life to keep that part of her mind under control, but here in the alien ship she found its power growing.
Though the others appeared to consider the possibility that the ship had been abandoned, Erin knew they were wrong. She had felt his presence, the creature that must have placed these false memories in her mind, that had manipulated her for its own purposes since the day the alien ship crashed, destroying her family and her life.
For over an hour the squadron came across similar chambers to either side of the corridor, some apartments of several rooms and others small single room quarters, though more than half of the rooms were barred from them by locked doors.
In those rooms which had been left open, they encountered still more pictures, books, and wall icons, and a curious disheveled atmosphere created by overturned chairs and drawers and doors left half open, as if the previous occupants had all left in a hurry.
Finally the corridor widened, and gradually all of the doors were locked, though their bioscanners detected no traces of life within. Another hundred meters further down the passageway ended in a set of wide shutter-like doors that slid back as they approached.
There was no doubt that the cavernous space they entered was the bridge and command center of the vessel. The great room was at first pitch black, and the team lost sight of each other once they were inside, but as the door behind them swished closed, a sea of instrument panels across the room lit up various colors of blue, green, red, yellow, and white.
At a guess Knightwood would have said that the command center was at least twice the size of the central communications center at the UESRC, which had measured 52 by 32 meters.
"There should be a way to shed some light in here," Zhdanov suddenly spoke, musing his thoughts aloud.
"Good idea," W moved aside so that the cadets in the back could get a better look around. "We should spread out and look for something obvious, maybe a picture label, but if you find anything that seems likely, don't touch it until we've made a group decision as to what to do."
Erin felt the cadets behind her fan out in all directions, but her attention was focused on a small blue-green flashing button at the very front of the room on the long instrument panel that stretched from the left side of the room all the way to the far right wall. It was just one button of the thousands located on the closest end of the panel in front of the first crew chair at the forward viewport.
Slowly she advanced towards it, accompanied by a presence which had found residence in her mind and urged her forward.
Knightwood turned around from the bit of the back wall that she had been inspecting near the commander's chair to survey the room. She saw Zhdanov admiring the forward view window which they had perceived once their eyes had become accustomed to the newest shade of darkness they had encountered.
The viewport before and above the long forward instrument panel was shielded beyond by a layer of metal and still further insulated by a network of fibrous metal circuitry that gripped the metal plating. Knightwood was sure that the circuitry was designed to somehow expose the viewport to space beyond for a clear view of the stars in addition to the obvious protective role it played.
Erik, Nathalie, and some of the others cadets she recognized had followed W's lead to the other end of the room and were presently clustered around a wall switch one of them had found, debating whether or not one of them should touch it.
Then Knightwood noticed Erin by herself, not far from where they had entered.
And then the room was filled with light.
Knightwood blinked and squinted, searching the four corners to see if they had been surprised by their hosts, but there were only cadets burying their faces in their arms or in the wall, with W looking up under her hand like Knightwood to see what had happened, and Erin Mathieson staring up at the viewport as if nothing at all had occurred. Knightwood watched as W motioned the group together and headed to the center of the room.
"Katrin, could you set up a bioscan device for all traces of organic materials? “What do you think?" W turned her head to Zhdanov and Knightwood.
"Good idea." The Ukrainian scientist nodded, preoccupied by his own investigations.
A minute later, the bioscan let out a faint, high-pitched droning whine, and the display flashed the position from which the scanning reflector beacon had detected organic traces.
The team moved slowly to the right of the forward instrument panel near one of the crew chairs. Leaning down to the ground, Katrin took a moment in retrieving the trace material, picking it up and holding it so that the others could see what it was.
The hair fragment was fine and white but strong; it was about six centimeters long. Katrin put it in her sample canister on the flight utility belt at her waist once they had all seen it, sealing the canister until the hair could be taken back to the UESRC for study.
Knightwood couldn't help but wonder again where the aliens had gone. The fact that the bridge itself had been deserted seemed the most compelling evidence that the crew was gone. But to where? And though so far the alien vessel had appeared to have been deserted, finding the trace of hair put any assumptions into question. The whole situation didn't make any sense to her, unless more information could be determined from the piece of hair. Certainly they would at least be able to find out how old it was at the UESRC.
And what kind of creature it had come from.
Suddenly Knightwood felt in a hurry to get back and begin analyzing the artifacts which the team had gathered. Looking down at her video wrist communicator, she realized that they had long since passed their initial fall back time.
"We've been in here almost six hours now," Knightwood announced, her eyebrows raised marginally in surprise. "Don't you think Arnaud and Kansier will wonder what's happened to us?" Her gaze turned to Zhdanov, whose forehead furrowed in concentration.
"We're going to have to call in the recon teams." Zhdanov shook his head. "This place is just too big to continue exploring with a cadet squadron, and since it seems there’s no one home, we don’t have to hurry anymore. We need to make a full and more thorough investigation of the entire ship—and determine if it is truly uninhabited. I don't think we should risk sticking around. We still might be attacked, and then we won't be able to bring back the information we've learned to Headquarters—"
"I agree," Knightwood nodded. "Let's turn around and head back the way we came."
"Fine by me," W looked from one of them to the other, inwardly relieved. "We don't want to push our luck. And besides, the other recon teams should be waiting for us outside by now, and these guys have a graduation ceremony to attend."
Some of the cadets smiled and shook their heads, hardly able to believe that they had forgotten about tomorrow's graduation ceremony.
As the team headed back to the corridor which had brought them to the bridge, Knightwood watched Erin curiously but kept her mouth shut about what she had witnessed before the lights came on.
Without stopping among the crew quarters, they found the elevation shaft in under twenty minutes. Knightwood half expected to be attacked as they were heading back, but they managed to make it to the cargo bay unmolested.
At the forward air lock, Zhdanov checked his chronometer. The fluorescent letters read 22:29, nearly seven hours having passed since they initially entered the alien ship.
* * * * *
"Something's going on in sector eight, sir," Major Dimitriev said. Kansier had dozed a little in the Captain's chair on the bridge of the Stargazer, where he and Dimitriev waited to pick up the Blue Stripes Sky Hawks’ tracking signals. The signals had faded as soon as the Blue Stripes entered the alien ship. Then, schematics had suddenly begun to animate the display screens and instruments.
In a rush Sc
ott had leaned forward to determine what had caused the burst of activity; seeing that the commotion had originated from sector eight, he had come to new life, now hypersensitive to the boom of his heartbeats and the butterflies beating his stomach from the inside.
Could they still, beyond all hope, be alive?
The relayed information created graphs of gravitational waves and showed atmospheric fluctuations; a moment later, Scott realized that the alien ship was rising.
He felt a wave of panic settle on his shoulders and suppressed the urge to do something as foolish as hailing the alien vessel. There really was nothing anyone could do to help the Blue Stripes and the UESRC team, he reminded himself, and everyone involved had understood the risks of the operation.
The Blue Stripes wouldn't be able to make it out. And Scott had never really let that possibility sink in until now.
She was lost now—
As Scott pushed away thoughts about the cadet team's chances of escape, he noticed the stream of information flashing across all of the bridge monitors slowing down. The scientific portion of his mind that was still functioning translated the information for him: the alien ship had stopped ascending after only a minute or so. Her present position was reported dead even to ground level despite the depression she had left in the rock bed.
* * * * *
Inside, the cadets had made it to the air lock corridor when they felt faint vibrations beneath their feet and heard an accompanying sound of grinding before they realized that the ship was slowly rising. Some of the cadets ran down the corridor in wild fear while others remained rooted to the spot. Knightwood, W, and Zhdanov did not move either but waited a moment to see if anything else happened.
When the ship stabilized, the group quickly traversed the narrow space between them and the outer air lock chamber where some of the cadets were gathered. Knightwood wondered if the ship had risen off the ground more than they guessed and was a little worried about opening the air lock. None of their wrist communicator compasses could determine just how far above the surface they were.
And then the ship decided for them. The air lock doors pulled open heavily but smoothly before them, affording an even ground level view of sector eight and the second recon team positioned not far away.
Knightwood thought she saw Erin Mathieson-Blair saying something out loud just before the air lock door opened, but she could not be sure. Yet with the view of the dark starlit night before them, she observed Erin's face unmistakably light into a very strange smile.
Chapter Thirty
The team returned to the East B cargo bay at 22:44. The others headed off to get some sleep before the graduation ceremonies the next day, too tired to notice or care that Erin had been called back by Saira Knightwood.
Knightwood and Zhdanov invited cadet Mathieson to their lab that evening. Erin had worked as an assistant in Zhdanov's old laboratory a couple of times during her third training year and knew the location and function of every piece of equipment. Knightwood had suggested she might be of immediate help programming the microscanners and retrieving the chemicals they would use to test the compositions of the materials and hair that they had brought from the alien vessel.
When Erin arrived after a brief visit to her quarters, Zhdanov had left for a progress update link to Cameron in the communications center. When he returned an hour and a half later, he found Erin and Knightwood absorbed over a microscope, the lights in the lab dimmed.
"Any luck with that material?" He asked to announce his presence.
"The alien uniform?" Knightwood looked up from the scope and wiped her brow, removing the goggles from her eyes. "Illuminate," she announced in an even tone to activate the overhead lighting.
"It's immutable—we still can't extract a swatch." She continued, trying to contain her excitement. "It's not what we thought—but some kind of dense, microscopic weave of non-organic metallic and crystalloid fibers—a hundred percent impermeability. Makes our carbon-sixty fibersuits and diamond fibersuits look like tinfoil! I'm not sure, but it looks like it’s been treated with another substance—some synthetic carbonic crystal with traces of silicates and ceramic compounds.
Zhdanov took the news stoically, waiting until she had finished.
"Anyway," Knightwood continued with no small hint of excitement, "it resists organic acids, radiation, corrosives—everything we've got. It took an hour for the computer to decode a sequence of reagents to denature and dissolve the coating before we could look at anything other than the visible structure of the fibers. But they're stronger. I can't even maintain a reaction—"
"Did you run any performance tests?" Zhdanov asked.
Knightwood nodded. "It withstands and distributes extreme pressures, from .062 atmospheres up to 17 atmospheres. At 17 atmospheres, the suit itself seems to be exerting some kind of negative pressure from within its microstructure—but we can't resolve the layers beneath the surface lattice—the scanning microscope can't retrieve an image," Knightwood concluded.
"Have you tried another method—"
"Like I said—it's radiation resistant. It looks metallic, but I can't prove the composition of the alloys if we can't observe the structure—if we can't get the thing to react—and I don't want to destroy the suit in the process. However, we ran a few simple tests to verify radiation resistance. The suit reflects gamma rays, x-rays..."
"What about a lepton stream?"
Knightwood swallowed. "We don't understand how it's doing it, but—the suit repels neutrinos. And electrons. We can't get anything to pass through it. Except heat—infrared, actually. The suit appears to maintain a constant temperature—we dropped the atmospheric conditions in the holding canister and cut the light, but it never dropped below 22 degrees Celsius in the interior. Then Erin suggested we introduce a stream of infrared waves away from it—and the suit attracted the energy, changed the direction of the waves. We think it absorbed an initial amount of heat energy to maintain a temperature of 22 degrees Celsius in the interior—and then shut off."
Zhdanov only stared, trying to absorb the information.
"And listen to this: whatever deflects the radiation also reflects high-intensity energy."
"Laser energy?"
Knightwood nodded. "Makes our laser cannons and pistols useless."
Zhdanov remained silent another moment, his eyes thoughtful. "What about the helmet?" he finally managed.
"Almost the same results as the uniform—only it isn't resilient." Knightwood said. "Again—the same microstructure, similar alloys, polymers, and crystal components but with more crystal and ceramic compounds giving it a rigid structure—and just as resistant to corrosion, pressures, and radiation. I tried it on," Knightwood laughed, gleeful as a child. "The thing has one-way vision—you can't see the interior, but I could see out—and there were two reflectors in my peripheral vision that gave me a limited view behind me—a limited 360 degree line of sight, if you will.
"But you may need to sit down." Knightwood's eyes sparkled with a strange mixture of excited fascination and instinctive anxiety, dealing with realms of scientific advancement far exceeding her own understanding—centuries, if not millennia, beyond their own level of technology. Once Zhdanov was seated, she continued.
"The particle scan can only correlate a similarity between the helmet's superficial composition and the same unknown high-density electrically charged alloy we retrieved from Statue City years ago—the same fragments littering the Charon orbit. We can't be sure, and there's no telling what's underneath the helmet's exterior—but the scope found minimal variation between its surface and the fragments taken out at Charon, which are slightly inferior."
"Are you saying—?" The look on Zhdanov's face was indescribable.
"The aliens may be one and the same!" Knightwood announced triumphantly.
Erin had watched silently throughout the interchang
e. At Knightwood's final remark, she shuddered, suddenly uneasy. At that moment, Knightwood remembered her presence again and turned to study Erin's face. Now if only she could figure out how Erin had been able to guide them in the ship, what presence had contacted her, why the aliens on board hadn't appeared, Knightwood thought. But she had no immediate ideas, only that some intangible forces were at work. And her scientific training needed physical and tangible proof.
"What about the video conference with the Council—did Cameron activate his link-up?" Knightwood finally thought to ask about the progress meeting.
"The Council's scientists arrive tomorrow, after the graduation ceremony." Zhdanov responded, putting the disquieting test results out of his mind temporarily. "They agreed to wait a day since they've already waited thirteen years, and yes, Cameron did respond to the signal. He'll be here late tonight."
"Good." Knightwood interjected.
"And we'll have thousands of scientists from the bases coming in and out over the next few months." Zhdanov continued. "But the UESF council has agreed to keep all of the evidence here near the source. No doubt with all of the ins and outs that will be going through that ship, they'll need an entire cargo hold to store it all—and we have all of the necessary equipment for analysis.
"We'll have teams of specialists coming in that we'll have to quarter in the North Wing." Zhdanov smiled. "Cryptographers, evolutionists, bio-engineers—everyone wants to get in on this as soon as possible. Hendricks and Liu will be here in an hour to help once they've finished reviewing the video report from the ship. Leonhardt, Klaar, and Urdeep will relieve us at 0100.
"What about the boots?" Zhdanov asked, composing himself. "Any aberrations? I assume they're the same," he added.
"They're composed of the same material as the uniform—a mesh of thin fibers that gives the boots flexibility, protection, and structure, coated on the exterior with a thin film." Knightwood swallowed. "But the interior structure resembles the helmet—a sponge-like inorganic material provides shock absorption for the feet and covers up layers of intricate microcircuitry—still, I'm no electronics genius." She shrugged. "The computer analysis only suggests a few possibilities for the simpler stabilizers and electromagnets."
The Osiris Invasion: Book Two of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 28