$-- Copyright (C) 2019 Jason Self $-- SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later You can redistribute and/or modify this under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. > "Space isn't lonely; it's all about perspective. You run a ship long > enough, and you're bound to collide with something out there in the > dark." --Captain Isaac Marshal, 1091 kNA. Third shift was always a pain as far as Hector was concerned. It was bad enough to miss out on precious sleep while the rest of the ship dozed comfortably in their bunks, but what really killed him was how boring it was. No coordinates to plot, no adjustments to make, no orders to follow. I can't believe I'm wishing for someone to order me around, he grumbled to himself mentally. Telltales flickered on the control station in front of him indicating the ship's status. Everything was running smoothly, just like it had been yesterday, and the night before, and the one before that. He leaned back in his chair and propped a foot up on the console. Napping on watch was strictly forbidden, but it wasn't like anything was going to happen anyway. At least, that's what he was in the middle of telling himself when the beeping started. A light changed from green to pulsing yellow, and two more that had been previously unlit now highlighted the contours of his face with a bright blinking red. The sound of his feet hitting the floor echoed through the small bridge as he began to manipulate the controls. Something had set off the proximity alarm. They weren't due at the trading post for another week, so this was definitely a problem. Passive sensors couldn't tell him anything he didn't already know - there was something out there big enough to endanger the ship and it was statistically likely that they were going to hit it if he didn't do something. Reaching across the console, his first order of business was to get a second pair of hands at the controls. And heap this responsibility on someone else, he thought, cursing his earlier desire for something to do. "Captain to the bridge. I repeat, captain to the bridge," his voice echoed through the ship's PA system. To his credit, his tone sounded much calmer than he felt. Cry for help accomplished, he began to frantically flip switches across the board. Screens lit up as the active lidar scans began reporting a more detailed picture of the space around the ship. Not an asteroid or a comet, Hector confirmed. Not a planet, either, which at least meant they hadn't accidentally drifted off course during his shift. He couldn't decide if that was a silver lining or not. "Status," came a gruff voice from over Hector's left shoulder as he continued to probe the system. He didn't have to look back to recognize who it belonged to. "Unknown contact, sir, tripped over our passive sensor bubble one minute and thirty-seven seconds ago. Might be space debris, or a derelict, but all I know so far is that it's not natural and it's on a collision course," reported the watchman. "Well get us off a collision course, then. We can worry about what it is after," the captain replied. Grey haired but physically fit enough to make anyone give second thought to antagonizing him, the man held an imposing presence. "Aye aye, captain. Adjusting course by two degrees, vertical," Hector acknowledged. Turning left or right would have potentially served the same purpose, but even small changes in angle would exponentially increase their travel time to the trading post over a long enough distance. Better to go above or below whatever this object was and recalibrate their y-axis accordingly later. Another body plopped into the seat at the station to Hector's right; this one a mess of gangly limbs and thick-rimmed glasses. "Can't leave you alone for more than a few hours without you getting bored and putting us in a game of chicken with the nearest planet, can we, Hector?" taunted the crew member. "Shove off, Liz, it's not a planet and I didn't do anything," retorted Hector. Liz, short for Elizabeth - although she would try and convince anyone she met it was short for Lizard - snorted in amusement at Hector's exasperation. "Enough of that, you two," reprimanded the captain. "Hector, you're chair one. Maintain pilot's duties. Liz, chair two, scanners. Tell me what we're dealing with here." A chorus of "Chair one, aye," and "Chair two, aye," met the captain's orders before the bridge fell into a professional silence. They weren't a military vessel by any means, but there was a discipline to the crew that came innate with the hazards of running a salvage ship. It was dangerous work. People died with little to no warning when care and attention to detail weren't heeded. Jokes and a lack of formality were tolerated but, when necessary, the Aven became the tightest run ship in the sector. "Might be another ship, captain," Liz reported after just a few moments. "Distress signal?" "Negative, sir. There's no emissions coming off that boat. No beacon, no communications, nothing. Their engines aren't even lit - that's why the computer had to take a minute to decide what it even was. The non-organic shape triggered the funny-business alarms, but whatever's over there is cold as a rock," she explained. Sensing a bonus payday, Hector turned to face the captain. "Sounds like a salvage opportunity to me, sir," he said, hopefully. "Should I slow us down?" Sitting with his chin resting on one hand like The Thinker made flesh, the captain didn't reply immediately. Expectant silence filled the bridge. Finally stirring, he shrugged slightly and said, "Bring our relative velocity to zero, match course, and give me an estimate on how much time this is going to add to our delivery date." "Aye, aye, sir," Hector replied with a grin. Bending to the task, he began to manipulate the flight controls. From an outside perspective, the Aven made a sharp 145 degree turn before flipping backwards and firing its boosters to apply the brakes. Inside, they felt no shift in gravity from their seats. "Computer says that - not counting any time we spend salvaging - re-accelerating and course correcting will add roughly two days to our trip, sir," the pilot reported as they completed their maneuver. "Hopefully this is worth the delay," the captain mumbled in return. Neither Hector nor Liz knew if he was speaking to them, or to himself, so they agreed through their silence as they continued to monitor their respective stations. Time seemed to slow down now that the initial rush of activity had passed. It would be a couple hours until they came alongside the ghost ship. Liz had wandered off somewhere, only to return with half a ration bar between her teeth. "Mith anthn?" she tried to vocalize. Not bothering to look up from his console, Hector asked, "What?" "I said, did I miss anything?" "Nadda. We're still pinging 'em every fifteen minutes or so, but nobody is picking up. Starting to look like she really is abandoned." "Did we ever think she wasn't?" Liz replied. "We shouldn't take anything at face value out here," interjected the captain. "Liz, go wake up Chen and fill him in." Liz looked like she was about to protest the fact that she'd just sat back down, but thought better of it. Leaving the cabin, she went to wake the final member of the salvage ship's crew. Chen was, for lack of a better term, the muscle. Any operation that put suits outside the airlock had Chen in the lead. He'd grown up on a heavy gravity world, and while he wasn't the smartest spacer in the sector, his reaction times and his considerable strength had saved everyone's life at least once. A fresh beep came from Hector's station. Glancing down, he pressed a few buttons before turning to address the captain, "Sir, the derelict is in visual range." "Shunt it over here, then," the old man replied. Moving a gimbal that contained a screen towards himself, he waited for the relevant data to appear on his command station. Numbers began to pour across the display. Swiping away from the hard data on ship mass and other minutiae, he brought up a graphic of the ship itself. Stubby and bulbous, it reminded him of a collection of mushrooms growing off of some central log structure. There was no obvious front or back, or any visual place for any kind of thruster or engine. Stranger still was the color. The nearest star shining light on their little piece of the galaxy was a yellow dwarf a few hundred million klicks away, and it bounced off the hull of this ship like an iridescent beetle. After a moment of additional calculation, the computer suggested a depression in the hull that was - as accurately as it could guess - a point of entry. "This thing smells fishy as all hell, but anything this weird is probably worth a decent chunk of coin, too," the captain thought out loud. Before Hector could discuss the suspicious nature of the vessel further, Liz and Chen returned. Suited in standard EVA gear, the bulky white outfit made the small bridge seem even more crowded than it actually was. "We're ready whenever you are, captain," Liz said. Grunting in acknowledgement, the old man stood and made his way towards the back of the ship to find his own suit. Standard procedure would have one man remain behind to mind the Aven, in this case Hector, while the rest performed an initial valuation and then got to looting.Silently happy to be the one left behind, Hector wanted nothing to do with the strange ship now that he'd had time to study it more. Humanity knew that they weren't alone in space. Encountering the unknown wasn't the issue, not exactly. There was just something unsettling about the design of the ship. Something inherently wrong, like how certain patterns and colors would awaken an instinctual wrongness - a genetic memory to ward off dangerous behavior. Stay away from that poisonous creature, the brain says, you've never seen one before, but you know it's trouble. Liz and Chen wandered back out of the bridge as the moment of truth drew nearer. "Testing, one, two, can you hear me, Heckler?" Chen's baritone voice came through the console. "Don't call me that," Hector replied, holding down the transmission button. No laughter came through the comms to taunt him, but he knew that Chen and Liz were having another chuckle at his expense. Being the newest member of the crew came with the expected downsides, but he couldn't help acting the way he did. Heckler had stuck as a nickname after his second ever salvage job, when he constantly tried to warn Chen how irresponsibly dangerous he was being. The captain would have probably reigned the behavior in eventually, but it was obvious that he wouldn't get involved if he didn't need to. Chen wasn't entitled or inherently rude, but it was easy to lose his respect by over-managing him. The captain knew that. "Thirty seconds until airlock cycles," reported the familiar, commanding voice. Speak of the devil. "We won't be deploying the tunnel or trying to pressurize against their hull. Too uneven, and we don't even know if their atmosphere plays nice with ours. Suits will be on tethers until I say otherwise." Hector didn't need to reply unless he was asked a specific question or the computer provided him with data the captain needed to hear, so he kept the line clear and just listened. Mentally counting down the seconds, he imagined he could feel the airlock opening as he hit zero. It would have been entirely in his imagination, of course. Small white figures emerged from the side of the Aven as he watched on one of the close-range visual sensor screens. Each suit trailed a braided metal harness that connected them to the open airlock door. They could retract themselves manually at any time, or Hector could choose to pull everyone back with the big red emergency button on his console. It had been drilled into him over and over that no matter how anxious he got, he shouldn't touch that button unless he was ready for the captain to physically obliterate him. So far he'd managed to resist the urge. "Door's locked. Should we try knocking?" Chen asked as they congregated around the area the computer had decided was an entrance. Without waiting for an answer, he pulled a small laser welder from his tool belt and ignited the tip. "Careful, if that ship's pressurized, you might blow yourself away when you put a hole in the hull," Hector reminded him, unable to resist his need to interject on the quiet comm line. A hand waved on the tiny screen, and Hector was pretty sure that Chen was flipping the camera the bird. "This is why you're a heckler, Heckler." "The door, Chen," the captain's voice overruled any dispute before it could escalate. Hector stilled in his chair, and Chen went back to preparing his welder. Once he had the beam tip at a satisfactory length, he went to work, cutting along a slight depression that could have been the seal of a door. Or it could have been a fancy engraving of the ship's name, for all we know, Hector thought to himself. The Aven had actually been the Scavenger at one point in time, after all - at least until the paint had worn off the front and back ends of the label. A few tense moments later, and a man-sized hole had opened up on the side of the foreign craft. If the interior had been pressurized, they'd either cut into a pocket of empty space between the hull and an interior hallway, or the pressure was so low that it had simply leaked out through the cut. One by one the shapes of the three salvage operators disappeared into the hole, leaving Hector to stare at their tether cables. "Hallways are empty. Clean, though, almost like they've been recently maintained. Everything's that same strange rainbow hue in here," Liz narrated for Hector's sake. "Doors every twenty meters or so. Slightly smaller than human average. Good thing Chen's head isn't too full since he's likely to knock it at least a couple times in here." "At least I don't go to school for eight years only to end up on a salvage ship," Chen retorted. "Low blow!" Chuckles ensued as the good natured ribbing subsided. Hector was glad they were having a good time, because he was a ball of nervous anxiety. After a few moments of radio silence, he began to grow even more uneasy. "Guys, you still there?" he asked. Static crackled for a second before the response came though. "-at the end of the hall. Going to crack it with the welder and hope the bridge is on the other side," Chen said through the fuzzy connection. "You're breaking up," Hector advised, "Partial copy on your last." He was greeted only by more static, with the occasional flare of volume. This is absolutely the last thing I need, he thought, glancing at the big red emergency button. They weren't quite in 'worth getting obliterated over' territory yet, but the urge was definitely rising. After another two minutes of no contact, he stood from his chair and began pacing. With the captain's chair and the two console stations jutting up in the middle of the room, there wasn't much room to work off his stress. As he lapped the room for the third time, "Hector!" shouted out over the speakers, followed by garbled white noise. Three quick, long strides put him in front of the console. Slamming his hand down on the transmit button, he asked, "Say again, I repeat, say again." Looking frantically over his screens while he waited for a response, movement caught his eye on the visual of the outside of the ship. Something dark was crawling around on the outside of the other ship's hull. What the hell…? he thought, moving to try and adjust the zoom. Before he could refocus the camera, however, one of the tethers went slack, and his attention was drawn back to the entrance. Someone slowly drifted out. Maybe they knew about the dark figure too, and were going to investigate? No… there was something too stiff about the way they were floating. Then their figure rotated, and Hector saw the large red blotch on the front of the crisp white suite. "Oh, fu-" A loud bang on the Aven's hull interrupted him. Flinching, he glanced at the door leading towards the back of the ship. His first instinct was to seal the compartments between him and the airlock. Halfway to the first set of doors, he realized he was acting out of order in his panic, and turned back to slam the retracting button on the tethers. The other two lines hadn't gone slack, and he could only hope that he was rescuing live people right now and not reeling in corpses. This was so not part of my contract, he whined to himself as he ran towards the back of the Aven. Through the galley, crew bunks, and medical, each room passed like a blur before he arrived at the airlock. Engineering was on the far side of the hall, but there wasn't anything he could do to seal that without locking himself in the back of the ship. Each section was divided by a large bulkhead door. Normally, these doors would automatically seal in the event of an atmospheric breach to a part of the ship. Now they would act as buffers between himself and whatever was out there. Yanking hard on a bright yellow handle caused a cacophony of gears and counterweights to groan momentarily. Each door started to slide shut slowly at first, then picking up speed to slam closed after a few seconds. When was the last time these things got serviced? Hector wondered. His fear was making his reactions sarcastically inane, but he couldn't help it. How was he supposed to process what was going on outside? Making his way back through each individual area, he repeated the routine. Pull the lever, confirm the door seals, move on. Once he made it back to the bridge, he went back to the screen showing him the situation outside. The outside of the other ship's hull was now covered in dark figures. It almost looked like they were a part of the iridescent pattern; like black polka spots swarming and coalescing along with the rainbow hues of the smooth, bulbous exterior. "Screw this," Hector said out loud, grabbing at the pilot's controls. Engaging the thrusters while people were still outside on tethers was a big protocol no-no, but he didn't care at this point. Engines flared and the ship kicked away from the assumed derelict. "Can anyone hear me? Are you guys there?" he asked as he flew, hoping that whatever had been jamming their communications wouldn't affect them any more. Only silence replied, and a grim expression set itself on Hector's face. He could check the airlock camera later. His first priority was getting the hell out of Dodge. Another bang sounded somewhere against the hull. Had one of those things managed to jump between the two ships before he'd escaped? The Aven didn't have any guns on board. Hyperventilating, Hector decided to try and run a series of sensor scans on his own ship's hull. There would be some interference from the overly short range, but he should still get something. Data began scrolling across his screen. Metal composites, radiation, things that you'd normally find on the surface of a spaceship. There. Something organic, carbon-based, unknown origin. Whatever that was, it was hitchhiking, and he wanted it off. "Did you seal these doors, you asshole?" Liz suddenly shouted through the comm net. Nearly jumping out of his seat at the sudden sound, Hector yelped embarrassingly. Good thing he wasn't transmitting unless he had the button held down. He cleared his throat, and replied, "You're alive! Yeah, I sealed them. I don't know what you guys found out there, but I didn't want one of them getting in here." "Well we are out here and we want in," Liz said angrily. Hector wanted to snap at her for laying into him when they were obviously dealing with bigger problems right now. Instead he asked, "Who's hurt? I saw someone was injured on the video feed before I pulled you all in." Quiet filled the bridge and Hector was afraid that the radio had cut out again when Liz finally said, "Chen didn't make it. I'm fine. So's the captain, but he's unconscious. Knocked his head when you yanked us out." Hector took a deep breath. He was prepared to face casualties as a part of life on a salvage ship, but not like this. Not from a hostile force. Speaking of hostile forces… "Liz, one of those things is on the Aven's hull, I'm pretty sure. Close that outer airlock door if you haven't already. I'll come back and let you farther in soon." "Soon better mean 'I'm walking back there now and the only reason I'm not replying is because I can't stay and press the comms button'," she replied, a note of fear undercutting her snark and anger. Manually unsealing each door took a lot longer than closing them initially had. Each one struggled to fully open. The one between the bunk room and the infirmary didn't want to open at all, and Hector had to scrounge around for something to pry at the gap with. Settling for a metal tube that had originally acted as a curtain rod to separate the ship's restroom from the common area, he managed to make a gap wide enough to slip through. Please, please don't close again, he prayed as he finished crossing through to the other side. These bulkheads didn't have portholes, but he could imagine Liz standing on the other side of the door fidgeting impatiently. He pushed the emergency lever back up into its cradle and waited. At first nothing happened, then the servo-mechanisms cranked to life and began to retract. Liz had already moved Chen's body and the captain's unconscious form from the airlock proper to the small hallway between medical and engineering. "About time," she said critically. Her helmet was off, but she was otherwise still dressed in her bulky EVA suit. Same with the captain. She hadn't bothered to remove Chen's, and Hector decided that was fine by him. "Let's get the captain on the other side of this door, and close it up again," he said as he moved to position himself by the older man's legs. Liz took his arms, and together they hobbled him through the door. More banging echoed through the hull, and Hector crossed his fingers that this thing didn't have the strength to breach the metal shell on its own. "What happened over there, anyway? I lost contact with you guys and the next thing I know Chen's body is floating out in front of my camera." Liz's gaze was unfocused, and when she started to reply it sounded almost detached. "We started cutting on a door we thought might lead to the front of the ship, but it was filled with these creatures. We don't know if it was the bridge, a dormitory, or even a brig, but they moved fast. Chen was at the front, of course, and one of them stabbed him with a spear-looking thing. The captain threw a salvaging charge at the entrance and we started booking it back down the hallway. Explosion must have taken out at least ten of the suckers, but after they regrouped they started coming after us on the floor, the walls, the ceiling…" She stopped talking, staring down at the captain's limp form. "He started pulling on Chen's tether, trying to get him out from behind the swarm, but we took a wrong turn and got herded deeper into the ship, so he gave up. I guess the swarm must have finished carrying his body the rest of the way out the front door. Then you pulled us back, right through the pack. It was like a haunted house roller coaster." Hector didn't know what to say. Deciding to focus on what he could do here and now, he gestured towards the medical exam table in the middle of the room. "Let's get the cap up on there and make sure he doesn't have a concussion or anything." Liz nodded wordlessly. He'd need to keep an eye on her, too. Watch for deeper symptoms of psychological shock. But right now he needed her help, and maybe giving her something to do would help distract her. More banging against the hull. "Liz, I need you to take care of the captain. I'm going to try and throw our hitchhiker off the ship." She nodded again, moving mechanically as she pulled up a diagnostic screen to check the captain's vitals. Hector quickly walked back towards the bridge, determined to do whatever he had to to shake their unwanted guest. Settling into the pilot's seat with a calm smoothness that concealed the knot in his gut, he began flipping switches to warm up various thrusters. Salvage ships were built to make minute adjustments while working around dangerous conditions, and he was going to abuse that fact now. Putting the Aven through an evasive course of twists, rolls, and other high-g maneuvers was easy enough to start. The hard part came when the internal gravity generators couldn't keep up with the quick and random changes that he was initiating. He began to feel his body being pulled around as he bucked the ship like a wild bronco. Inertia strained, and warning lights began to flicker on as he kept stressing the system. Maneuvering thrusters burned out when they competed to push the ship in opposite directions, victims of Hector's inability to precisely keep track of every switch he was flipping in an effort to move as randomly as possible. The hull itself began to groan. Another warning light flickered red; this one telling him that if he kept his antics up, he'd lose integrity. Forced into easing up on his whipping about, he flipped a master switch. All of the thrusters killed themselves at once, and the ship settled into calmness. They were probably rotating wildly, but it was all in one direction and the internal gravity could handle that. No banging greeted him when he listened intently. Time to run another scan of the hull. Fingers crossed, he started the process. "Well?" Liz asked as she appeared behind him. "We'll know in a second. How's the captain?" "He's going to have one hell of a headache when he wakes up, but he'll be fine," she said. Between riding out the gravity dancing, and working the medical systems, she appeared to have recovered some of her composure. Data once again streamed onto the console screen, and Hector looked for the telltale organics. Nothing. "We're clear," he breathed a sigh of relief as he leaned back in his chair. "Thank God," Liz said, echoing the gradual relaxation that seemed to sweep throughout the ship. Bending forward to work the console once more, Hector began the arduous process of resetting their destination. After their impromptu, erratic, off-course trip, the computer struggled to re-calibrate their ETA to the trading station. "Might be two weeks instead of one, at this point," he mused out loud. Liz settled into the chair next to him, closing her eyes and propping her feet on the console. "It could take a month, for all I care, as long as the trip is nice and boring," she said idly. Amen to that, he thought, glancing at a blinking light on his console. Labelled 'Transmitting,' it sat next to a looped video recording playing innocuously on his screen. Bulbous shapes of rainbow sheen stared back at him, along with bright green text showing a set of coordinates, and a warning. Hopefully no one else would run afoul of the hostile species any time soon. Chances were low that the message was even necessary. Space was a big place, after all.