by Angie Arland
He swept the beam over the blackened area. Gouges covered the entire panel and radiated inward, as though something had worked hard to get inside. Claws? Whatever the freck had claws that big may still be inside.
Spero sat relaxed at his feet, panting.
“Sir, does Spero still have her super alien sense while wearing her EVA suit?” Harper asked.
“She doesn’t use scent to detect them but somehow senses their presence. And, right now, she isn’t sensing anything terudithan.”
“That’s good then.”
“Not to say there could be something else hiding in there.”
“Oh. Right.” Harper’s nervous swallow could practically be heard over comms.
Putting his trust in his hound, Aiden stepped into the pitch-black room. Kellanie’s light-beam swept across the side wall, so she hadn’t been killed by whatever left the claw marks outside. Maybe he was being over-cautious, like she said, but it wasn’t just his ass on the line. His hound and entire crew were at risk.
Swinging his light-beam around he found a circular structure, the computer core he assumed, rising up from the center of the spacious room. One solid bank stacked up in layers with a diameter around twenty feet stretched from deck to bulkhead. At its peak, numerous tubes and heavy wires spiraled from one main central unit outward in all directions.
“Harper, stay here,” Aiden said on direct comms. “I’ll check the other side of that core or whatever the hell it is.” He turned to Spero and hand gestured for her to come with him. Using his rifle’s light-beam he descended the slanted floor and continued the sweep, holding his wrist at an angle to look between holo and light. A faint red blip appeared on the holo. “Life-sign is in this room,” he said on open comms and gestured for Harper to arm himself.
Harper yanked in his tethered rifle, removed the safety, and held the stock to his shoulder. Through his faceplate the man’s eyes were about as round as they could get.
“Careful,” Kellanie said as she was descending from a catwalk to their right. She came alongside Harper and held her rifle at the ready.
Aiden glanced down at Spero, who sat beside him. She met his gaze and gave her usual doggy smile with the additional bonus of a tail wag. He inhaled and continued putting his trust in the retriever, then gestured for her to accompany him.
They resumed their sweep, making their way around the pillar.
Spero darted a few feet forward and barked though her comms. Aiden raised his plasma rifle, his finger hovering over the trigger.
“What’s that?” someone said over the open channel.
“Spero find something?” Karson’s voice.
Aiden relaxed his grip on the rifle and stepped forward to examine what looked like a vertical cryo-tank. A faint green illumination came from inside. Spero sat at its base, gazing at it. Aiden looked down at his holo. “I think I found our life-sign,” he said.
The human woman inside the tube seemed to be somewhere in her twenties perhaps, it was hard to tell through the green substance. He could see she had on clothing that appeared in rough condition, lots of tears and floating pieces of fabric.
Spero jumped up, placed her front paws on the tank and whined at the unconscious woman.
“Okay, girl. Okay. We’ll see what we can do.”
Kellanie and Harper arrived and lit up the tank with their light-beams. Re-engaging the safety, Aiden released his rifle, and allowed the tether to take up the slack, before accessing his holo to run a particle analysis.
“Whoever this is, she must have one hell of a story to tell,” Kellanie said.
Holding the holo up to the tank, Aiden initiated the scan. “One-hundred percent human with a steady pulse at twenty BPE. Vitals are at a low deep sleep level basically. Hmm…terudithan, human, and dinnarei blood are coming up as well.”
“Look at her arms, Aiden. They’re coated in blood,” Kellanie said. “Might account for the stains on her clothing too. How in the hell did she get here?”
“And why keep her alive?” Aiden said, gazing at the woman. “Squids kill every human they encounter, as far as we know. Harper, your thoughts?” He valued the SigsOp’s opinion, even if the man ground his nerves daily.
“We sure she’s human?” Harper asked.
“The readings bear it out. The green stuff has a gel-formulant that reads almost…thirty cycles old?” Aiden double checked the holo. “Can that be right? That’s older than she looks.”
“Thirty cycles?” Harper looked skeptical.
“Seems that way,” he said, looking up at the woman.
“Maybe it’s a preservative,” Kellanie ventured.
“From the passage of time?” Harper asked. “I suppose it’s conceivable, but that’s not my expertise.”
“McNeill is studied in physics and biomolecular engineering, maybe he’ll be able to explain,” Aiden said, then hailed the ship. “Aiden to Cendent, do you copy?” He used her actual title, thinking it might garner some respect.
No response.
“Flea, do you copy?”
“Cendent, answer your comms,” Kellanie said in a harsh tone.
“Yes, captain,” Flea responded. “Go ahead.”
“Captain Lomax requires your assistance. Kindly treat him as you would me,” Kellanie ordered.
“Go ahead, sir.”
“Cendent, can you patch me through to Doctor McNeill?”
“One moment, Captain Lomax.”
Aiden was surprised at the sudden respect in the dinnarei’s voice.
The doctor responded an em later. “Yes?” He sounded like he’d just woken up.
“Doctor McNeill, I need you to suit up. We require your expertise.” Aiden held his breath waiting for a response. The doctor rarely left his lab— which was, technically, beside the point, since he no longer had a lab to work in.
“What? What for?” McNeill stammered. “I don’t understand.”
“We’ve found a human female inside some type of cryo-tank. I’d like to bring her onboard either with or without the tank.” Aiden hadn’t run that by Kellanie, but whoever this poor soul was, he sure as hell wasn’t going to leave her on the alien vessel for all eternity.
“Did you say human female?”
“I did, so we—”
“That’s incredible,” McNeill interrupted. “But can you guarantee my safety if I leave the ship?”
“No guarantees in this occupation, doc, but we’ll do our damnedest, you know that.”
A long pause, then, “Very well. This does interest me greatly, no doubt. How do I get to you?”
“Reece will escort you to our location.”
“Yes, um, good. I can’t carry one of those guns though; I’ll have too much equipment. The dinnarei has graciously supplied me with tools to continue my research, but I’d like a fresh terudithan if you have one laying around, preferably thawed.”
“All the bodies we have ‘laying around’ are frozen—good thing, though, otherwise we’d all be dead…”
Aiden was about to remind McNeill they were on the clock and using up their O2, but the doctor continued over him. “That’s too bad,” the man said. “Well, tell me exactly what you are looking at, so I know what equipment to bring.”
Aiden looked at Kellanie and Harper and mouthed the words ‘too bad?’ He stepped past Spero and checked the cryo-tank’s dimensions. “Okay, doc, we have a tank roughly ten feet high and about as wide in diameter. Inside is a comatose woman, maybe twenty-three to twenty-eight cycles old, human by all accounts, scans confirmed. She’s upright in a green gel-like substance…”
“All right. I’ll be ready in five ems. Reece is here and heard everything.”
“Sir,” Reece said over the comms, “we’ll get suited up and be at your location asap.”
“Fifteen ems?”
“If not sooner, sir.”
“See you soon. Aiden out.”
“You know it will be longer than fifteen, right?” Harper said on closed comms.
&
nbsp; “Yeah. McNeill will be running non-stop scans along the way, I’m sure.”
“That and talking Reece’s ear off about his latest hypotheses on alien origins.”
“Though he isn’t wrong,” Kellanie chimed in. “This is an incredible find,” she said, gazing hungrily at the woman inside the tank. “I can’t wait to crack this open.”
Twenty-Nine
Weapons Specialist Noah Karson shuddered in his EVA suit. He looked below from an upper deck at the hangar bay and the huge hole in the hull, the vastness of space beyond. The sheer size of the Terudithan cruiser all around them boggled the mind. He glanced down at the AEV Mark-I a couple levels down, the entire ship fitting easily in the bay, and he wondered if it was a good idea to for them to be there at all. Damaged Terudithan fighters and extended tubes with some kind of organic-looking sacs attached to them littered the cavernous hangar bay, suspended in zero-G.
He peered at Ryder, who also had her head on a swivel, checking out the eerie space. “You think we should be here?” he asked on a closed channel.
“Where else would we be?” Ryder was always so matter-of-fact.
“I don’t know. Like, anywhere else?”
The bay somewhat resembled a Dinnarei battle cruiser; similar trunk-like pillar structures held each level in place. He knew this because he’d once been tricked into spending fifteen days on a Dinnarei vessel. He’d received an invitation from his own father, Admiral Chris Karson, although Noah should’ve realized the source; in reality, Cadet Corporal McGrath—not his father—had sent the consent orders just to squeeze Noah into a less-than-pedestrian assignment during much anticipated holiday leave. For the most part, he ended up without an escort and cloistered to a compact cabin the entire time. It was McGrath’s idea of a joke.
“Ryder, Karson…” Aiden’s voice over the comms brought him back from his wandering thoughts. Besides, it was long ago. Hard to hold a grudge against a dead guy, even if he was a bully. “Anything to report?”
“Nothing really intact yet, sir,” Karson said.
“We’ll speak up soon as we come across anything, sir,” Ryder added.
Unlike McGrath, Aiden Lomax was somebody you could respect. The crew’s captain had lost his wife and son to this war, and everyone noticed he’d become distant, isolated. Karson had come to think of Aiden as more than his C.O. but also as a good friend—hell, they’d known one another since before cadet school—so he had a plan to, with luck, ease some stress for his pal once they got home…if they got home.
Rifles held in position, they entered the upper corridor beyond the hangar bay. It was a mess of debris and twisted metal. Noah’s heart thumped hard with each step, shining his light-beam along the pitch-black corridor. He and Ryder worked as a team, lighting their way with confined light-beams. The extended corridor ran way out of sight.
“Freck…” he said with a grunt, shining his light at two, no, three Terudithan bodies floating in front of them like statues, shark-like skin deteriorated in patches revealing organs and muscle. Noah used the muzzle of his rifle to push one out of their path. Inertia swept the alien into the bulkhead above, breaking a limb off like a chunk of ice hitting the concrete.
Ryder flanked him. “I thought there’d be more of them,” she said through the helmet comms.
“Most must have ejected into space when the implosion tore the hull.” Karson often dreamed about being sucked into space with no EVA suit. It had been a fear of his since his youth, and he shuddered at the thought, figuring that would be how he’d go someday.
He shined his rifle’s beam into a dark compartment, ran the light around the walls. It was devoid of anything other than a single metal table, and the next few rooms were the same.
“Look there,” Ryder said, aiming the beam and the floor near one table. A splash of violet-pink Terudithan blood, with a few frozen blood bubbles floated above.
“Maybe they treated their wounded here,” he said.
They continued along the corridor, sweeping each room and coming up empty every time.
“Karson to Aiden, do you copy?”
“Go ahead,” Aiden responded.
“Ryder and I have almost finished the sweep of this deck. We’ll proceed to the next deck.”
“Affirmative. Proceed with caution…Spero, get back here…Spero!”
“Sir?”
“Dammit! Spero just took off…looks like in your direction.”
“We’ll get her,” Noah said, checking the life-signs on his holo. “I’ve got her on my holo actually.” Adrenaline rushed through Karson’s veins as a little excitement got his heart thumping. “Ryder and I will fetch her.”
“All right, thanks, Karson. Let me know as soon as you have her secured. Don’t let her out of your sight, okay? She’s a little excited. Aiden out.”
Ryder swept her rifle’s light down the corridor while Noah kept an eye on his holo, both waiting for Spero to appear. After a few ems, Karson said, “she should be right up ahead…now,” just as the dog in her EVA suit appeared in their light.
“Spero, hey! Come on, girl.” Noah pulled the emergency tether from the side of his suit and knelt, waiting for her to come to him. “That’s it, come on. Good girl.”
The retriever dashed between them, the suit aiding her speed.
“What the —?”
Ryder and Karson watched as she turned into a room to the left of the main corridor. They went after her and stopped just inside, both sweeping their light-beams around the room.
“Got her.” Ryder extended her tether and lunged forward, hooking it to the back of Spero’s EVA suit.
“Jeez, what’s got her so riled up?” Karson said.
“Beats me. Come on, Spero.” Ryder said, petting the dog’s back, but Spero was tense and fixated on something.
“Ryder to Aiden…”
“Go ahead, Ryder.”
“We have Spero. She’s safe. I’ve attached her to my tether. She’s not too happy about it though.”
Karson held up his hand. “One sec, sir,” he said, then he motioned to Ryder at his holo and tapped it. It displayed several blips—lots of them.
“Karson, why are you cutting comms? What’s up?”
“Take a look.” Noah shined his beam across the room.
He heard her sharp intake of breath in his earpiece.
Spero had Ryder’s tether extended to maximum. The dog lay on her belly in front of a glass panel. Karson’s light lit up the inside, where a young human boy hung in its gravity-less interior. The boy’s long golden hair waved about as if he was underwater.
Ryder swept her light. Beside the first panel floated another boy with long golden hair, then another beside that one. Noah shined his light around and revealed a dozen more, all upright, all apparently in stasis and oblivious to the outside world.
“This is frecking creepy,” Ryder said, barely above a whisper.
Aiden’s voice came over the comms. “Karson, Ryder, report!”
“You don’t recognize him?”
“The boy?”
“Yeah. Look at him, Ryder.”
“He…yeah…he looks familiar…” She seemed to be struggling with her memory.
“I forget you haven’t known Aiden as long as me,” Karson said. “Ryder, I may be wrong, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure this is…these…are Samuel Lomax.”
“Aiden’s son?” Ryder gawped through the glass at one of the boys, at the blond hair and sweet freckled face. Spero whined at his feet and pawed at the glass.
Noah pulled up his holo and took a high-resolution image of the boy in front of them.
“Ryder? Karson?” Aiden again. “Report!”
“I don’t know what to make of this…” Ryder said, blinking back and forth between the boy and Karson.
“I don’t either,” he said. “So far we haven’t found any other rooms filled with clones but this cruiser…it’s enormous…” Karson faltered and touched the glass. “Why Sam? He…” Noah swallowed. “
He looks the same.”
“Ryder? Karson?” Aiden’s voice had a stern but panicked edge. “Report now, or we’re headed to your position.”
“We have to reconnect comms, Karson.” Ryder pulled up her holo. “Aiden needs to know his son is here.”
“Wait! Ryder! We can’t tell him.”
“Why the hell not? He has a right to know. It’s his son for freck’s sake.”
“If your son was lost and, seven cycles later, a room full of him turned up, how would you take it? For all we know, none of these are the real Sam, they’re just replicating him genetically.” Karson held up one finger. “Just give me an em more before you say anything, okay?” He gave his best imploring look, then switched to open comms. “No need, sir! Sorry, sorry, we, uh, we’re just trying to figure out our next move and, uh, I didn’t want to fill the line with chatter…sir.”
“Spero’s okay?”
“Uh, yes, sir. Spero is A-Okay, sir.”
“Use the sign-off next time. You guys had me wired.”
“Sorry, sir. We will, sir. We’re going to move ahead with Spero and let you know if we come across anything. Signing off for the moment.” Noah cut comms before Aiden could answer.
“He’s going to be more wired now,” Ryder said.
“We don’t have much choice at the moment.”
“Noah, I get your point. I do. But, still, Aiden needs to know. Then…then he can choose which one he wants to…uh, keep.”
“What the…?” The Weps shook his head. He would stay off comms until his O2 ran dry if it meant convincing Ryder. “We aren’t talking about a pet turtle here, Olivia! How would you feel if someone lined up your children and told you to only pick one? The rest, well, we’ll just leave them drifting in cryo on an alien ship, never to be recovered. I can’t…we can’t put him through that.”
“Then we’ll take them all with us.” Ryder began pacing along the rows of Sams, her light-beam strobing off the glass panels. The tether to Spero moved with her every step.
“Oh, sure. Fleet Command will give us the thumbs-up to hauling in a dozen clones made by squids! Yeah, guys, bring ‘em on in here. While we’re at it we’ll all have birthday cake and ice cream.”