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sarissophori · 4 years ago

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Forebode, Chapter 3

The shuttle entered the Wayfarer’s hangar bay and set down. The outer doors closed, and atmosphere displaced the vacuum. After undergoing decontamination, Barrens handed the flight recorder to Hornens in engineering, and Farzen gave his xenological sample to Dr. Han for study, glad to get rid of it.

After a well-earned shower and food ration, Barrens went to C-deck’s rec room to relax, where Varrez and Talgold were also blowing off steam.

“Welcome back” Varrez said.

“Yup” Barrens said. “Pass me a beer, would ya?”

Varrez nodded, handing him a bottle from a dispenser.

“Much appreciated.”

He popped the top and took a swig.

“So, how was it down there?” Talgold said. “The moon, I mean.”

“Cold, barren, lifeless” Barrens said. “A regular graveyard.”

“That bad?” Talgold said. “I only ask because I wanted to go with the next away team, when Captain Hindel schedules it.”

“It’s your typical dirtball, kid. What do you expect it to be?” Barrens said. “And that wreck? Jesus.”

“We heard some of the crew talking about it” Varrez said. “Must’ve been worse actually being in it, though.”

Barrens sighed, then took another swig. “Either of you two done any salvage before?”

Varrez and Talgold shook their heads.

“Well, when I’m not ordering part-time colonials around” he said. “I’m supervising recovery missions for the company. My first salvage was a medium-sized freighter that went missing in the Orion Traverse a few years ago. There was a crack in its radioactive shielding, so the crew abandoned it. By the time we got there, it’d been free-floating for a month; no power, not even auxiliary; the whole ship was pitch-black, and it was only me and two other guys to scout the whole ship, level by level.”

He took a third swig.

“Of course, you don’t really expect anything to happen to you. Not usually. Just a quick check for hull integrity, personal affects, logs, whatever else the company wants, and you’re out before the tugs haul it off; but there’s always something about being alone in a corridor, surrounded by the blackest darkness you’ll ever see, in the middle of space, with only one tiny little light.”

He finished his beer and lobbed it in the trash, the noise surprisingly jarring.

“This was different, though.”

“How so?” Varrez said.

“Has the captain told you guys anything yet?”

“We’ve heard things in passing from the bridge” Talgold said. “But they’ve been pretty hush-hush about it.”

“Without saying too much, then” Barrens said. “Things looked like they took a very bad turn before the end, especially in the lab. There was a…growth, or something, completely calcified, probably since the crash.”

“A growth?” Talgold said.

“If that’s what it was. Dr. Han’s got a little piece of it to play with, so maybe he’ll figure out whatever the hell it is.”

Varrez and Talgold exchanged glances.

“Is it��?”

“Before you ask” Barrens said. “I don’t know anything about it. You got questions? Save’em for the captain or wait for the results.”

“But what if there’s—?”

“Go. Ask. The. Captain. I’ve probably said too much as it is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna grab another beer, then I’m gonna go to bed. Later.”

Barrens swiped another beer and promptly left, turning a sharp right at the bulkhead for the terminus, his boots thudding on the grating. Varrez and Talgold stared at the door as it closed, feeling suddenly uneasy.

“What was that all about?” Varrez said.

Talgold shrugged, and the two of them sat there for a long time without a word before returning, in uneasy thought, to their stations.

Up in A-deck, Dr. Han was performing several tests on his specimen from the Wanderer when Dr. Walsh entered, standing by the door frame.

“Afternoon.”

“Is it already?” Han said, not breaking his focus.

“That’s what the clock says. Hard to tell otherwise.”

“No kidding.”

Han tapped at a few icons on his tablet, transferring them to his main console.

“What brings you by?”

“Hindel informed me we have a foreign specimen onboard” Walsh said. “As senior medical officer, I thought it prudent to stop in and see it for myself.”

“Can’t admit it’s for your own curiosity, can you?” Han said, his attention now on the console itself.

Walsh stepped forward, approaching the work area to glimpse, at a respectful distance, over the shoulder of his colleague, seeing the many tiny fragments sealed off in pressurized containers, others undergoing a variety of testing.

“Is this it?”

“That’s it” Han said. “Not much to look at really.”

“Anything interesting?”

Han turned his eyes to his tablet again.

“Aside from being organic and carbon-based, most of the other tests are still too early for anything conclusive.”

“Is there a chance of contagion?”

“I don’t think so, considering XH-Ld’s environment, but better safe than sorry.”

“The cornerstone of our professions” Walsh said, looking on, then furrowing his brow.

“Where was this found, exactly?”

“I’m not sure” Han said. “Near the crash, I think. Why?”

“Curious” Walsh said. “I’ll let you get back to your work then.”

Han nodded. “Drop in anytime.”

Captain Hindel was sitting at her desk in her quarters when the door chime rang.

“Enter.”

Dr. Walsh stepped in, hands pressed at his back.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

“Just making arrangements for the next away team” Hindel said. “What can I do for you, doctor?”

“I would like to ask you something” Walsh said. “The, um, specimen; was it found on or near the ship?”

“It was found onboard” Hindel said.

“Where?”

“In the laboratory, covering up a chunk of it, too. We think they had it contained as a sample, until it broke out and grew after the crash.”

“So, it grows and then…just fossilizes? In supposedly its native atmosphere?”

Hindel shrugged. “I don’t know why you’re asking me. Dr. Han’s the go-to guy for anything xeno-related.”

“I was already with him” Walsh said. “He says his tests are still too early to prove anything definitive.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you” Hindel said. “How about you tell me what it is you’re really concerned with?”

“That’s just it, I don’t know what my concern is” Walsh said. “Only that I have it, and that I feel somewhat foolish for it being based solely on a feeling I can’t shake.”

Hindel smiled. “Join the club. We’ve all been a little jittery since we got here; I’m sure nerves are most of it. We’re a new crew, and this is a first assignment for most of us. Hell, this ship is my first command. When you say you’ve got the jitters on a hunch, I know what you mean –none better.”

“Yes, well, I appreciate your confidence” Walsh said.

“Do you think we need stricter quarantine protocols?” Hindel said.

“No, I’m sure the ones we have are fine” Walsh said. “I guess I just needed to have my vague premonitions noted, is all.”

“Consider them noted” Hindel said. “Anything else on your mind?”

“No, captain, not at the moment. But thank you for lending me your ear.”

Walsh turned to leave.

“Dr. Walsh?”

He stopped and turned.

“I like it when my medical officers come to me with their concerns, no matter how vague. If you have any more, please let me know.”

“Of course, captain, and again, thank you.”

Walsh left, and the doors closed. Hindel returned to her away team roster and a few of her more mundane tasks, including writing another log for her superiors:

< Log 2

Hindel, Laura A. manual report

Mission time: 4,504 .15.07 hours

USC Wanderer discovered on XH-Ld at 15 degrees lt., 45 degrees lg. of north

hemisphere. Ship destroyed beyond short-term salvage. No surviving crew found;

one body identified, buried. Flight recorder recovered. Found xeno-morphic anomaly

onboard, see attachment 1. HUD feeds from SAR team attachment 2. Until further

notified, proceeding with secondary mission objectives.

(attachment 1)

(attachment 2) >

Another chime rang, this time on her console. She tapped on the icon.

“Captain’s quarters.”

“It’s Hornens, ma’am. I’m calling to update you about the recorder.”

“Go ahead.”

“Yeah, here’s the thing about putting it in an escape pod” Hornens said. “By removing it from the ship, it survives the crash. However, it still got knocked around a bit on landing. Now, because it was kept airtight it was spared corrosion, but a lot of data got corrupted anyway, and it’s gonna take a little while to clean up.”

“How long?”

“Hours, maybe” Hornens said. “And that’s with me and Mason working at it around the clock.”

“If you don’t have anything more important to do, I request that you make this a top priority.”

“Can do” Hornens said. “I’ll give you another update when we’ve got something, Hornens out.”

The icon clicked off.

Hindel went back to her away team roster and stared at it, not overthinking, but not blanking out; her mind was in a hazy area between, where intuition was allowed to creep in and make suggestions of its own. After a moment of hesitating on it, she opened a com-link to Sergeant Barrens.

“Barrens reporting.”

“Sergeant, I want you going down with the next away team.”

“Understood” he said. “You expecting trouble? I thought this one was science only.”

“Not your whole team, just you” Hindel said.

“This is an unknown, unexplored world; I don’t anticipate trouble, but if something does happen, I want someone down there who knows what to do in a survival situation.”

“I hear you, ma’am.”

“Good, Hindel out.”

The captain had her next team signed up and ready: geologist Dr. Varrez, xeno-specialist Dr. Han, and junior medial officer Dr. Talgold were selected. Attaching the sergeant to them as a contingency, she formalized the roster and returned to the bridge to help select the next landing site on XH-Ld. Ellson and Tajmaran already had the Wayfarer making topographical scans of the northern hemisphere. Varrez was also there, watching the images unfold across the main display.

“I think it’s safe to say from these readings that the whole crust is mostly a silica-quartzite compound” Varrez said. She then pointed to a specific part of the scan.

“And look here: limestone deposits, lots of them. Maybe it had water on it at some point, at least in these depressions.”

“You know what they say” Hindel said. “Where there’s water, there’s life.”

“And where there’s not, there’s fossils” Ellson said.

“Very funny” Varrez said. “Though not strictly accurate. Actually, several species of bacteria and fungi can live without water for decades, even centuries, or even—”

“Hey, biology nerd” Ellson said. “Another wave of scans coming in.”

“Oh, these look promising.”

Banter and small talk continued through the shift. Hindel caught snippets of it though sat mostly in her own thoughts again, mulling the same tired questions, wondering about the same missing pieces and returning to the same dead ends for answers, nowhere nearer to a sense of closure; where was the Wanderer’s crew? What happened to them? Why did they use one of their escape pods for their flight recorder and not personnel? Was there a mutiny? There was evidence for it, but what was the cause of the crash? Maybe the growth in the lab did have something to do with it. If so, was it a mistake allowing a piece of it onboard her own ship? She sank deeper in, losing track of both time and site results.

“Captain?” Ellson said, breaking her concentration.

“Yes, ensign?”

“We’re getting strange readings not far from the Wanderer, near the highlands by the dune sea.”

Hindel sat up from her slouching posture. “Bring it up on display.”

Scans of the area in question pinpointed a location where metallic signatures were pinged; a wide, deep valley currently obscured by dust blowing down from the mountains.

“Analysis shows traces of titanium-like composites and other unidentified metals” Tajmaran said, overlooking the same stats and furrowing his brow.

“Very dense, highly structured. They don’t match anything on file.”

“Any guesses, Dr. Varrez?” Hindel said.

“Yours are as good as mine” Varrez said. “I’ve never seen anything close to this composition. It looks almost artificial.”

“Artificial?” Hindel said, catching everyone’s attention. A charge of electricity swept the bridge crew, and they spun around in their chairs.

“Wait, really?” Komev said.

“Are you serious?” Ellson said.

Tajmaran stared at her, intrigued.

“I can’t make a definite statement either way without having a physical sample to study first, of course” Varrez said, immediately distancing herself from her words.

“All I meant to say was that these types of atomic structures are rare to find in nature –not unheard of, but rare, and surprising.”

“Or” Ellson said. “We could be dealing with something intelligently made.”

“I’d rather rule out all other possibilities before jumping to that conclusion” Varrez said, almost defensively.

Ellson shrugged.

“I’m just saying, why beat around the bush like this, when it could be?”

“Because you’re not the one with a science background?” Komev said.

“Like I need a degree to tell the difference between a rock and a hunk of stainless steel.”

“Some people do.”

Ellson smirked.

“If I needed one for example, I’d just pull out the lump of coal in your chest where your heart should’ve been, Komev.”

“Stow it you two” Hindel said. “You’re both flight officers, now act like it.”

“Yes ma’am” they said, turning to face their stations. Tajmaran shook his head, feeling the mood effectively killed. Varrez wondered if she should have even made the remark at all.

“That being said” she said at length. “The possibility of it is worth checking out. Are any of the other sites as promising to you, captain?”

“Well, let’s see” Hindel said, scrolling quickly through the candidates to familiarize herself, unwilling to admit she spent most of their shift staring off.

“Many of these are geologically promising, but since this one has proved so controversial, it’s probably best to get it out of the way first.”

“Agreed” Varrez said. “When will the shuttle be ready?”

“It’s currently on standby” Hindel said. “I’ll give you and your team twenty minutes to prepare. Will that be enough time, doctor?”

“Plenty” Varrez said. “I’ll get ready right now.”

Varrez left with an air of excitement, moving swiftly past the pressure doors. Hindel got up and made to leave as well.

“Ensign Tajmaran, you have the bridge.”

“Uh, me, ma’am?” he said.

“That’s what I said.”

Ellson spun to face her.

“With all due respect ma’am, I’m the senior flight officer.”

“You are” Hindel said. “But neither you or Komev were becoming of your ranks, and that pissed me off; ergo, Ensign Tajmaran has the bridge.”

Ellson and Komev glanced at each other. Tajmaran let out a low sigh, drumming his fingers on his console.

“Oh boy.”

“I won’t be long” Hindel said. “If you have any trouble, I’ll be in my quarters.”

#story #sci fi #science fiction #horror #forebode #sarissophori

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