Noah - 13. Chapter 13

Date: 5th April 2419
Location: MMV Noah, Unknown

“They appear to be the same ships that attacked us,” Sii’nour said, while scuttling around the table holding one of the alien corpses. “We were here investigating the sector for a potential mining operation when they attacked us without provocation. The Lahstey was just a scout ship, our weapons were minimal. We fought them off once but couldn’t hold them off the second time. From how you found it, it seems that once we had crashed into the rock, they just left us.”

“You had never encountered them before?” I asked, while Doctor Reilley began examining the body, making notes on a holopad.

“Until we entered this sector, we had never encountered another sentient species. I know nothing about them, but it is possible the other officers knew something. If you could retrieve the Lahstey’s computer core then maybe something could be recovered.”

“Do you have any experience with those systems?” I asked. Dissecting parts of Sii’nour’s ship would be a far simpler job to accomplish if someone who knew what they were doing was along.

“No, if the chief engineer were here, he could probably help there, but I don’t have a clue.”

“Fair enough. How is it going with Dr. Shen? I imagine that he is spending every second he can interrogating you.” I asked, changing the subject.

“I believe he is currently working on the proposal,” he replied, and I noticed the tops of his head flush a faint purple.

“I hate to disappoint him, but until we get more energy flowing in we won’t be upgrading anything, or bringing anyone else back.” Firing the flak batteries had put a serious drain on our meagre supplies. If the ship were at full power, they would have hardly scratched a fraction of a percent, but given our current state they had nearly halved what little we had built up.

Since the attack, both shuttles had been returned to mining duties and the fighters ordered to maintain a much closer patrol route. We had barely mapped our local corner of the system, but with hostiles confirmed in the area and no more fighters to defend us, I had decided that until we could start on building replacements they were more valuable in a defensive role than scouting.

“I am afraid that is somewhere I cannot help much. My knowledge is limited to medical matters.”

“I don’t expect you to,” I replied. Though Sii’nour had been assigned to work in the cloning facility, there wasn’t much he could do until I had approved Dr. Shen’s proposal and until we had more energy, I wasn’t willing to reassign the personnel and energy. After half a shift with Shen and no distractions, Sii’nour had decided to attend the autopsy of the alien to ‘assist’, though given the excitement and exuberance Shen had shown earlier, I suspect he simply wanted some peace.

“Curious....” Reilley muttered just loud enough to catch our attention.

“Doctor?” I asked, moving closer to the brightly lit table holding one of the alien corpses. As well as the two aliens first encountered by the marines, a third body was retrieved from the Bridge of the alien vessel, which was in by far the best condition. Thanks to the Spider’s effectiveness, all that could be retrieved from the engine room were severed limbs.

“The corpse is showing signs of massive temporal distress and gravitational warping,” he explained, apparently expecting me to understand what that meant.

“For those of us without years of medical training?” I sighed. I would have to call a staff briefing to develop a protocol of how to explain things simply to Command officers.

“Ah? Oh yes. Well, whenever a ship approaches the extreme velocities of light speed, time is distorted, you see. Initially this was a problem, since pilots of early spacecraft would experience time differently to everyone else. We developed the temporal compensator that is now installed on every ship in the fleet to ensure that everyone experiences time the same. Each time a person travels at near-light speed without a compensator, the change in temporal sync imprints a distortion onto every cell in the body. It would seem from the amount of distortion that our friend has spent considerable time as a fighter pilot.”

“So, he was a fighter pilot. What’s so interesting about that?”

“ ‘Was’ being the operative word. Over time, the distortions build up and, as seen in many Cannelli pilots, damage the brain irreparably. If this fellow’s brain responded in a similar way to a human’s, he would have been quite insane.”

“We observed similar phenomena when we started to approach light speed,” Sii’nour added, meaning it wasn’t something limited to humans.

“What would a mad person be doing as a member of crew aboard a fighting vessel?” I asked. As far as I could see, any species capable of space travel would be able to recognise insanity in its crewmembers.

“An excellent question,” Reilley replied, “and one I have no answer to. Unless of course the ship wasn’t operated by a well-governed organisation.”

“Pirates,” I said with a sigh. They often didn’t care who they took in, as long as they could shoot vaguely straight.

“From how they attacked on sight, I’d imagine that it is a distinct possibility.”

“But there were no signs of attempted entry on Sii’nour’s ship when we found it. Why would pirates go through all the trouble of shooting down a ship and then not do anything with it? They certainly looked to be scavengers.”

“Another excellent question,” Reilley sighed exasperatedly, and began to open up the torso. “There’s not really much I can tell you yet, Commander. Perhaps the engineering teams have had more success with the ship.” Reilley was highly competent when dealing with peoples’ bodies, but when it came to the person as a whole, he was less proficient. I took his final comment as a barely disguised ‘leave me alone’ and headed out of the medical bay, leaving Sii’nour to assist with the autopsy and provide his input.

It took nearly two hours of climbing through the ship to get to the Construction Bay, where the captured alien vessel had been towed and secured. Bodgit wasn’t entirely happy when I pulled two of his teams from repair duties to investigate the vessel, but I considered the potential threat of hostilities a large risk, and wanted to find out everything I could about who the aggressors were.

In the bay, the ship took up half of the suspended dock in front of the external door. From here I could see several crewmen walking over and examining the external hull, occasionally making notes on a holopad or tagging an area for later examination. Even after several thorough checks of the ship, a full platoon of armoured Marines was present in the bay, each armed with the heaviest cannon they could carry, in case anything did leave the ship, or if it somehow powered up.

Scattered over a number of landing pads were hundreds of tagged components which had been ripped from the ship and were now being examined by several engineers and scientists.

“How is it looking?” I asked the crewman who seemed most likely to be in charge.

“So far nothing special, sir,” He replied, showing me a holopad filled with schematic scans and component reports that may as well have been written in another language, for all the sense I could make of them. “There have been a few things we’ve been unable to identify, but pretty much everything is technology that we’d consider obsolete. The most interesting things have been the scanner system, which appears to be quite advanced, and it apparently used a cold fusion generator, which would be nice to look at had it not been destroyed.” Cold fusion had been a scientific dream for centuries, but even after coming close a number of times, it had never been achieved. Even though sequencing technology far surpassed the power generation efficiency of a cold fusion reactor, it would still be a scientific marvel to have a working reactor.

“What about weapons and defences?” I asked. In the battle, all they had thrown at us were a few small missiles. Even without the flak, they would have caused minimal damage.

“Primitive. So far, all we’ve come across are explosive missile racks and lasers. They’d barely scratch the hull. As for defence, the flak batteries would tear this tin can apart. From what we can tell, it’s made up of different parts of four different ships, all different ages, that have simply been bolted together. A single missile in the right place and it’d come apart at the seams. No point defences either; this thing’s just not made to fight.”

“Not much of a threat on its own then?” I asked rhetorically, while flipping through schematics to the scanner system. “What about the scanner system and reactor? They seem out of place.”

“It looks as if they were salvaged from a more advanced ship. It’s the only explanation I can think of. Their design is certainly different.”

I hadn’t noticed earlier while watching through the colonel’s eyes, but the scanner console was completely different in design to the other consoles on the ship’s bridge. Most were a worn, dirty grey, while the console was much cleaner; the inputs were more streamlined in appearance, and it simply didn’t fit in with everything else.

“It looks a little like some of the equipment aboard Sii’nour’s ship,” I mused to myself. The scanner console seemed far more similar to that design than the rest of the components scattered around, and the interface was nearly identical to the small handheld scanner we had recovered. I made a mental note to speak with Sii’nour later, to ask him if he knew of any other ships in the area. I certainly didn’t recall seeing any obvious places where a console had been ripped from the Lahstey, and from the state of the doors and bulkheads it definitely didn’t look like a ship that had been looted.

“So what is your preliminary assessment?” I asked as I picked up and examined a component.

“Unless we turn up any big surprises, and I don’t think we will, the scanner system is definitely worth reverse engineering. The reactor is a scientific curiosity, but really, I don’t think we would have much use for it; everything else is junk.”

It would be up to Bodgit as chief engineer to liaise with the scientists and decide what would and wouldn’t be worth pursuing, but the crewman’s assessment seemed to be on the money. The majority of the components strewn about the bay were obviously in very poor repair; many showing signs of having been roughly repaired in a hurry and simply never finished, and what wasn’t beyond repair was far surpassed by the technology aboard Noah.

“Very well, carry on and inform me if you come across anything of interest.” I told him, before turning and walking out. Whomever the ship belonged to was quite obviously not a legitimate organisation; nobody responsible would allow a ship to fly in that state of repair, or with that crew. At least recycling the components and hull of the ship should provide a nice boost to our energy levels, and perhaps allow us to construct a couple more mining shuttles to get us back on our feet.

“Commander!” A voice called from inside the bay, just as I was about to step into the air lock. As I turned around, I saw crewman Long running along the path towards me. “Commander, could I have your permission to fire up the computer from this ship on an isolated system? Crewman Yaeger says that I will have to wait until Ensign Bodgit writes up the final report for you, but if I could start now, I may be able to access some of its databanks and build up a picture of this system. We’ve barely mapped the area immediately around us, it’s likely that this ship has covered a lot more distance and is bound to have cartographic maps somewhere, not to mention all the…” I cut her off with my hand.

“After the computer has been pulled out, and once it is completely disconnected, you may then access it and see what you can find out. I don’t want that thing anywhere near our computer, though, and I want you to map out every component in it and remove any wireless communication devices before you give it power. Concentrate on finding information on the surrounding area first and any other hostile ships lurking about, then find out who they are.”

After making sure she understood and would put in place sufficient precautions, I dismissed her, cycled the airlock, and stepped back into the corridor.

This region of the ship was in reasonably good shape. Though there were many dead lighting panels, missing wall plating and the occasional damaged floor panel, there were no major repairs to be done here, so when it was mid-shift like now, the area was pretty much deserted. I acknowledged the few crewmen I did see, as I began the long climb back through the ship to the medical bay.

“It is quite possible,” Sii’nour said, while looking at the images of the scanner console and reactor from the captured ship. “If Command sent another ship to investigate when we did not reply, it could have been captured and looted. That reactor is definitely the sort that is used aboard our destroyers, and the console is also our technology.”

“What would happen if the search ship vanished too?” I asked. If whoever had attacked us had access to larger and more advanced ships than the one now sitting in the construction bay, it could be a problem.

“Eventually, Command would send a warship to investigate, though that could take some time. Warships are much slower than frigates or destroyers.”

“Slower?” I asked. “You don’t use wormholes to travel?” Until now I had simply assumed that the aliens in this sector had travelled here in a similar way to our method of interstellar travel.

“No, I am not sure of how it works, but we travel directly between systems. It takes larger ships much longer to travel than smaller; years in some cases,” he replied, amazing me. Humanity had never come near to faster-than-light travel without wormholes; we simply couldn’t construct anything that would resist the stresses.

“Another reason to resurrect your crew,” I commented. Sii’nour’s people were obviously highly advanced and it would be a huge technological boost if they could share what they knew. “Do you have any idea how long it would take from when contact was lost to this ship arriving?”

“I’m afraid not. The Captain would know, I’m certain, but I do not.”

This recent influx of information, combined with recent events, had played havoc with the priorities I had set for the ship. While it was very important to have the ship fully fixed up as soon as possible, and a good surplus of energy, it was becoming obvious that the Lahstey and her crew held many secrets that could greatly speed up that process, but would require us to divert energy from repairs to cloning in the mean time, which would be a great burden.

“Thank you,” I said. “I will need to take some time to think about what to do now.”

As I had dragged Sii’nour from assisting Reilley in the autopsy, I allowed him to return and after a few minutes’ thought, contacted Colonel Atkinson, asking him to meet with me in my quarters.

When I finally arrived at my quarters after making my way through the ship, the Colonel was already waiting for me at the door. Apparently, he had been inspecting the Marines on duty in the construction bay when I had contacted him, and it had taken him a fraction of the time to arrive that I did.

As I opened the door, I greeted him and invited him to take a seat at the table.

“I’m in a bit of a conundrum, and could use an experienced leader’s opinion.” I admitted as I sat opposite. If he was surprised by my admission, he didn’t show it. “Suddenly a lot of mutually exclusive choices have opened up, and I need someone to bounce the pros and cons off of.”

He was silent for a moment, before replying to my request in a more relaxed and world-weary tone than I had heard him use before.

“I must say that I am surprised.” He paused, not revealing anything in his manner, “Frankly, I had you down as a risk-taker, a man who rides on his gut. Every officer is taught the importance of a first officer, to balance their command, but most think that they know everything. Those officers tend not to live very long when they are in command, and have a habit of taking their crews with them. I thought Pavlov had made a mistake when he requested you as his first officer. You simply didn’t have enough experience for the position on this ship.”

Throughout this speech, I was unsure of whether he was going in a positive or negative direction with it. Neither his body language nor tone of voice gave anything away.

“You’ve proven me wrong, Commander. As yet, you have managed the ship well, and though I still have my reservations, you appear to have successfully made peaceful first contact with an alien race. I would be honoured to help you.”

Given his previous anonymity or outright hostility to my decisions, his sudden revelations took me back. I had expected him to help me, but with much more derision and dominance.

“What are the choices?” He asked, breaking my speechless silence.

“Some of the technology aboard the pirate vessel was of the same design as that aboard the Lahstey. Sii’nour believes that it is from a ship despatched to investigate their disappearance; so we don’t know if there is another ship out there, far more advanced and dangerous than that thing sitting in the construction bay. If there is, we have little chance of fighting it off in our current state. If we divert what little energy we have now to building a few bombers, we may be able to fight, but we have few pilots, and the crewmembers we have press ganged into pilots are hardly capable of major fighting.”

Getting a drink from the sequencer, I continued.

“We know there is some advanced technology aboard the Lahstey, but without someone who knows the ship’s systems, we could search for years without getting into their computer systems. We know we can clone the crew from their remains, but to do that, energy would have to be diverted to the cloning facility, and the sheer energy required would bring other repair works to a standstill. Then, of course, we can just pull the Lahstey here and examine it anyway, but then we’re pulling repair crews away from repairing the ship.”

The colonel was just about to reply, when the ship shook violently, throwing us both to the floor.

Scrambling to our feet, we both ran to the Control Room. As I had chosen my quarters to be nearby, it took under a minute before we were cycling the airlock.

“Report!” I shouted, as another shockwave shook the ship.

“Unknown ship is attacking us, sir! It just appeared from nowhere and opened fire.”

“Where’s the flak?” I asked, wondering how these shots were getting to the hull.

“Running; it’s blocking most of the missiles but some are getting through.”

“Fighters?”

“Tied up, there are at least a dozen enemy fighters out there. They’re holding their own but won’t last forever.”

Another missile impact shook the ship.

“Forward sector ten! No casualties!” a crewman shouted from the damage control console.

“What the hell are they firing?” I asked. The frigate’s missiles barely scorched the armour.

“They seem to be some form of low yield nukes. They’re frying computer systems all around where they hit.”

“Colonel, get your troops over there. I don’t care how, I want that ship neutralised. Capture it or destroy it, just make it stop shooting.”

Nodding, he forwarded orders to his troops as yet another missile hit the ship.

“Omni store five is hit! It’s going critic….” A massive blast shook the ship, shattering all the windows in the Control room and triggering the emergency shutters, just before the lights and consoles died.

Seconds later, the room was bathed in the green glow of the emergency glow sticks as emergency kits were opened.

“Omni store is gone, we’ve lost all power.” The damage controller’s voice called over the sudden silence.

“We’re being boarded!” The Colonel called as he received reports from the construction bay, which had been breached by one of the earlier missiles.

Sequencing a pistol from the tool belt in the emergency kit, I used the last part of the omni cell to send a simple message to the rest of the crew;

“To arms!”

With the missile attack seemingly halted while the boarders attacked, I ordered the Lieutenant who was in charge of the Control Room to prepare defences in the fighter bay and left with the Colonel to defend the ship.

Before we left the fighter bay, I headed into the briefing room and picked up the scanner that had been retrieved from the Lahstey and activated it. Immediately, red dots covered the screen as it showed every living thing around. Pushing a few more buttons, I finally got it to show just the deck we were on. Unfortunately, it appeared to show everything other than Sii’nour as red, be they us or the attackers.

“To the engine room,” I said to the Colonel when I had the scanner, and gaining his nod of approval, we headed into the corridors of the ship. With the bulkheads closed, it was relatively simple to secure the ship section by section, but in the short distance between them, there was little cover.

As we approached the final bulkhead before we were due to start dropping down the ship, a number of blips appeared on the scanner just on the other side. Unable to distinguish the crew from the invaders, I sent out a short-range ping through the neural link. Though communications were offline, a ping used sufficiently little energy to be powered by the body’s bioelectric field. With no return, I gestured for the Colonel to cover the door while I set the explosive bolts to blow.

As soon as the smoke cleared, laser fire burned through the doorway towards us, while the Colonel opened fire with his pistol, sending shards of plasma back. Two of the five blips vanished in the first few seconds, but it quickly developed into something of a stalemate.

Crouching behind the door, the Colonel took my pistol, as he recycled his own and created a Spider. Two more blips vanished as the small device leapt around the corridor, slashing and tearing the aliens apart. The final alien took several plasma shards to its back as it ran through the open door to escape the carnage.

Returning my pistol, the Colonel searched the corpse and recycled its weapon before using the energy to create a rifle. The other four aliens’ weapons gave him enough energy to create an Omni cell to power it and enough left over to power his camouflage.

On the way down through the ship, we encountered two more hostile squads, each of which was quickly and efficiently despatched by the Spider. By the time we had made our way to the Engine room, I too was armed with a fully powered rifle and we both had a little extra energy.

As we stood outside one of the upper level’s maintenance hatches, I checked the scanner. Inside were at least thirty blips, none of which responded to a ping.

“The Spider’ll be useless in there, too much open space.” The Colonel commented while recycling the blood-smeared disc.

“Any ideas?” I asked him. Aside from my lessons at school and a little at the Academy, I had little experience with combat aboard a ship, this was his domain.

“None good,” he said while mentally reviewing the options.

Cracking open the hatch, I saw the unknown aliens crawling over the large engine reactors while others were behind barricades, watching the main doors. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to have noticed the small hatches dotting the upper level.

“I think this is our best bet,” he said, producing an incendiary charge and throwing it into the crowded room.

Initially, the aliens scattered to get away from the device, but when the colonel withheld detonation, several slowly approached it to investigate. One at a time, several aliens approached, until a dozen were standing within its range investigating it, the rest returning to their previous activities.

Nearly half of the aliens were instantly vaporised as the Colonel detonated the charge, then immediately kicked open the hatch and opened fire. I added to the fire, but the Colonel was far superior; firing a burst to each alien he saw before moving to the next. In the confusion, the boarders were unable to return effective fire and were quickly eliminated.

With no more movement below, the Colonel signalled for me to stay put, then slowly and carefully stepped through the hatch, constantly surveying the area. Five blips appeared on the scanner as he was moving to the ground level. With him in a vulnerable position, I opened up on the doorway as soon as it opened, expending nearly a quarter of the omni cell’s energy. By the time I stopped shooting, there were no further unknown blips.

When the Colonel was in a good defensive position, he gestured for me to join him.

Just as I was reaching his position, two more groups of blips appeared, approaching from opposite directions. I was just about to open fire when a ping came from each group, signalling that they were part of the Noah’s crew. Upon our return ping, both groups carefully entered the room, first identifying us, then securing the area.

“Colonel!” One of the Marines in the group shouted and jumped up to our position. “They’ve overrun the construction bay. We’ve managed to prevent them from pushing out of it, but they are too well dug in for us to remove. The team sent to the Control Room reports that it is secure. With the engine room, we now hold all the ship’s control areas. There are still a few boarding teams roaming the corridors, but we are mopping them up. Oh, with communications out, I remembered some ancient history,” he finished, handing the Colonel what looked like an ancient radio device.

“Good work, Major,” he replied, “and good thinking with the radios. Dig in here and defend.”

“Yes, sir.” The Major obeyed, and began ordering the assembled troops and crewmen into defensive positions.

“We’ve repelled the boarders for now, Colonel. What next?” I asked. Since this was his area of expertise, I had decided to defer to him for the time being.

“Now, we go hunting.” He replied, just as the radio squawked.

“Construction bay clear, they’re falling back!” The unknown soldier reported.

Moving to a small porthole, I watched as several small ships headed towards the larger enemy vessel, from which the flashes of multiple missile launches emanated.

Time seemed to slow down as the missiles streaked towards us. With no power, the flak arrays were all offline, and with no flak, we had no defence from the missiles. Several of the crew were also staring blankly from other portholes at the munitions.

I looked down for a moment at the floor, and awaited the inevitable.