The probe was on its way, moving at about the same speed as a car with a driver in a hurry on the freeway, to its destination. Seconds later, she was maneuvering the probe through the target ship’s inner workings—the ship appeared to be layered almost like an Onion, but reinforced out the yin-yang, unlike anything she had ever seen before. So elaborate. So sophisticated. FRICK! Whoever designed this thing had an eye for making the other ship’s crew wish they never crossed its path. . . She gasped. She saw all kinds of technical data populating on her screen. The data was being recorded by the main computer along with the navigational and quickly began drawing conclusions about the aliens that designed and then manufactured it from what she was seeing and interpreting. This sucker could take a really awful beating in combat, and it probably would still be able to keep on fighting. . . . Her spine chilled as Smith sat back in the center seat and watched and listened to the audio coming from Aaen’s headgear—on-edge.
The away team found themselves in a living-room-sized area. Some low light was beaming through a seemingly barred opening in a metallic wall just below the ceiling. Aaen gestured for the away team to take up a right-triangle-like formation as he stood upright and looked through the opening. He could see what he reasoned was some kind of storage area, probably a cargo area. Overhead lights showed metallic storage units the size of a car’s trunk around the perimeter, and then three tall, humanoid shadowy figures walked into the room, two following one in the middle leading the entourage; two of them were carrying large suitcases that were secured to their wrists. None of the figures were familiar to him.
“Everything’s ready.” a voice said from above and left and sounded like the speaker was trying to be discrete as they drew nearer. Aaen didn’t recognize the voice but continued to pay attention.
“In here!” another voice called out, male. It was the leader of the trio.
The source of the first voice became evident—Aaen knew who this was. CRESTAX! He must have been six-foot-five, and looked like some kind of human-lizard hybrid; more human than not, but still he looked very sinister. Television shows and rumors were seriously exaggerated. The two parties met near a stack of storage containers. Aaen was just barely able to see Crestax’ back and the lead of the trio. Who was that?
“We’re short on time. Do you have the material?” the trio lead asked.
“It’s on my ship,”
“I want to see it for myself. My employer is very particular about making sure these things are done correctly.”
“After I receive payment,”
A pause.
“Are you sure you weren’t followed?”
Crestax gasped as though surprised at the nature of the question.
“Of course,” he said with a slight hiss.
At that instant, the trio leader’s right hand went to his right ear. “Yes, sir?. . . What?—WHAT?. . .UNDERSTOOD!” he snapped. “EVERYONE, GET OUTTA HERE! NOW!”
“WHAT THE—?” Aaen snapped.
The video feed was quickly blurring and filling with a TV snow-like effect. Shocked, Smith noted the video was snapping from one direction to another frantically as distorted multi-colored particle shots and beams flew from multiple directions. Gasping and abrupt yelling rapidly ensued.
“SOMETHING’S GOT ME! SOMETHING’S GOT ME!—URGH! I CAN’T GET IT OFF!” more yelling and shouting followed. It was from Aaen! Smith realized, running to the Operations station. He quickly got a lock on the away team and then activated the panel—he realized he lost one of their signals mid-phase!
Two seconds later, the video feed cut out. Smith looked at Jones. “Do you have the captain’s locator beacon signal?”
Jones turned around and then turned her head in shocked dismay.
“Nothing, here, Commander!” Hayes declared. This left a bitter taste in her mouth she was eager to forget, especially with the realization of what she had just said.
“Oh-crap,” Jones said, “Commander! That ship is powering-up! And we have thirty seconds until that scanning beam hits us!”
Two seconds later Sandberg and Connors tumbled through the boarding hatch to the bridge coughing violently with red cut areas on their faces and hands. Smith noted they looked like they had been darn-freakin’-nearly been mauled by a freaking-huge bear! This sight brought back nightmares he had years ago about camping trips that turned into close-calls. Smith also noticed a couple of bruised areas on both of their faces. He helped Connors up and into the sickbay area with the ship’s doctor who helped Sandberg; both were lifted into individual medical bunk bays as the doctor retrieved a scanning device from their pocket and began running scans as part of determining how to heal both of them. Additional tests would be forthcoming. Smith secured their sidearms in the storage unit behind the Operations station.
Smith snapped. “Jorgensen?”
“Almost. . .there!” he said with a struggle.
Ten seconds seemed to go by in an instant, then Smith repeated himself, “Jorgensen!”
“C’mon! C’MON! C’MON!” Jorgensen shouted, realizing the timing. This shot through the tunnel from engineering leading to the bridge like a shot from a sidearm.
Connors abruptly grabbed Smith’s left arm and pulled him close as the doctor was entering data into her medical bunk. She coughed hard twice in desperation and then grumbled, “They’ve-got-‘im!” she collapsed, staring at Smith. One of the bunk’s medical alerts sounded. The doctor shoved Smith out of the way and continued medical diagnostics.
“What the heck were they exposed to over there? What kind of weapon could cause this kind of damage?”
“I have no idea,” Smith replied gasping, looking at Connors as he stepped back and returned to the center seat.
“I’m still not getting a response from the captain’s headgear—not even so much as a transponder signal,” Hayes declared over her shoulder. As Hayes faced forward, she wondered, what the heck happened over there?
The doctor immediately activated medical containment grids that formed around the two occupied medical bunks. Their respective occupants’ vital sign readings displayed on a long horizontal holographic display below each occupied bunk.
Smith faced forward, eyeing the gargantuan ship in the viewscreen as the running lights quickly became brighter.
“They’re powering-up! Looks like they’re only powering their engines and—weapons!”
“Wilson, put some distance between us in case they activate their defensive matrix!” Smith commanded. Whatever defensive shielding technology that ship used, it would likely destroy Odyssey if they didn’t get outta the way. . . The reality of what had begun in the last two minutes was starting to sink-into Smith’s psyche: the assigned captain of this ship was no longer on-board—he was somewhere on that ship that was getting underway with their objective still on-board. His thoughts suddenly raced with possibilities as to what was going on over there. Was the captain okay? Was he still alive? How come the phasing array didn’t bring him back with the rest of the away team? What went on over there that prevented that? He considered a few answer possibilities, then pushed them into the back of his mind so he could focus on what he quickly realized he needed to do next, pointing at the viewscreen—“Follow-that-ship!”
“Aye!”
“They’re headed toward the same point in this—wherever this is.”
“Increasing to full sublight!”
A sensor alert sounded. “That beam is gaining on us! Ten seconds to impact!”
The front of the bridge turned around for an instant as Jorgensen looked through the tunnel to the bridge, “GOT IT!”
Computer sounds filled the bridge for several seconds and then the bridge attention was on Jones who abruptly announced, “STEALTH FIELD UPGRADE: COMPLETE! The beam hit the upgraded stealth field and passed right around us!—No sign we’ve been detected!”
A wave of fist-pumping lasted for a few seconds as attention on the bridge went back to the new data coming in from virtually every computer station. Smith noted the stars had become visible through a seemingly small area ahead. He leaned forward, “Steady. Steady.”
Wilson knew Smith was talking to him and nodded acknowledgment. Smith was rapidly adjusting the digital/holographic flight controls to keep Odyssey ‘level’ with their target, and within about 200 meters behind them (a struggle that wasn’t getting easier by the second) as both ships rapidly approached the opening and sharply flew through.
“We’re in open space!”
The alien ship immediately began changing course. Smith’s curiosity about where they were headed suddenly overwhelmed him as he looked at Wilson, “Can you get any idea as to where they’re headed?”
Wilson gathered some navigational data, did some computations for a couple of seconds and then looked over his shoulder at Smith.
“Where?” Smith asked.
“They’re headed for Union Space.”
“They’re headed for. . .” Jones lowered her head slightly, “Union Space.”
Smith sat upright in his chair and rubbed his face as thoughts about what might happen in the coming hours—if that? he wondered—burned across his synapses. That ship's huge—an attack would most likely be an act of hilarious futility, he reminded himself, recalling their having opened fire on that alien carrier earlier. . . Yeah, he wasn’t eager to re-live that experience if he could avoid it for reasons that were. He took a deep breath and brushed his hands over his face and tried to compute the apparent situational variables—it took seconds before he realized—or at least decided, for now—at this point, this ship and its crew were seriously out of their league, tactically, and strategically. He continued mulling over in the back of his head that behemoth of a ship and assumed its crew compliment hilariously out-numbered those on Odyssey.
He looked over the flurry of technical data filling Jones’ computer screen—she had started doing generalized scans to find out as much as she reasoned could-be-determined shy of consulting with Sandberg for a more finite tactical analysis which would essentially run scans whose results would be like looking at the ship from an exploded point-of-view, versus the possible counting how many hairs were in that ship’s captain’s nose—if they had a nose. Yeah, they didn’t want to get that much information, and the primary sensors were set to only gather particular data about the sensor contact, at least as far as whatever they were lucky enough to be able to pick up versus any interference. And there were gaps in the data, but Jones was gathering plenty, so far, despite. Smith was assimilating the data a little faster now that his tactical interest had been piqued. Subconsciously, he wanted to find a way in and through, briefly contemplating a rescue mission. But how would he even so much as try to do something like that? He asked himself, recalling the lack of security personnel, not to mention any onboard special forces contingent that could, he guessed, aboard that ship or do something else really clever to rescue this ship’s captain—and then there was the question about the Olyphium. He harshly asked himself what are we supposed to do now? This much contradicted his prior thought, leaving him at an inescapable conclusion—
Smith looked at Hayes, “Get me New Horizon. Use Priority Channel ‘Alpha’. Now.”
*****
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