Now, about those aliens…

…

Of course the first action I took was to call on security to disperse people across all decks and departments to make sure no one boarded our ship unnoticed.

We needed to find a way of detecting such boardings without having to deploy people, a matter I’d bring up at the first departmental heads meeting.

If there was ever going to be a time for it.

“Mallory to the Captain, can we meet urgently?”

Mallory was one of the three men in the shuttle that brought me to the ship, and he was, if I remember rightly, one of the scientists, his field being scanners. Just the man to ask about detecting alien presences.

“Come up the the bridge. We’ll talk in the day room.”

I handed over the bridge to number one, and met Mallory at the elevator. He took a few moments to take in the bridge, the screen, now showing both Uranus, and several of its moons.

“Great view “

“Sometimes it’s better not knowing what’s out there,” I said.

His expression told me that comment might have been a little too flippant in the circumstances.

“Come this way.” I led him to the day room, opened the door and followed him in.

“I assume,” I said after waiting till the door was closed, “that it’s not a matter you wanted to share with the rest of the bridge.”

“That’s for you to determine. But it’s about the ship that was just here.”

“We believe it’s alien.”

“It’s not.”

OK. That was a revelation, but how could he tell the difference? My immediate guess, they had no previous alien profile to run it against.

“How so?”

“We have scanners, and we have scanners.”

Confusing to say the least, but I think I knew what he was trying to say. We had a military presence, but until I became captain, I didn’t realise we also had military hardware.

What else did we have?

“We have the ability to scan other vessels, and in certain circumstances, check for lifesigns inside. But we only had earth created ships to use as a subject for testing, simply because we know the compounds used in our vessel’s structure, including this one.”

“So anything made by us can be scanned?”

“Yes, and that ship just standing off us, we could scan it and what and who was inside, which means it’s not an alien vessel.”

That was perfectly good reasoning, except as far as I was aware, this ship was not completely earth technology.

“There might be only one way to create the outer skins and superstructure, in any ship.”

“That’s possible, yes. But we anticipated that we might eventually run into something we couldn’t penetrate until we could work out what the ship was made of and then work out how to penetrate it. That so called alien ship, we could see inside.”

“It could still be an alien ship. After all, I assume you adjusted the scanners to work through the material this ship is made of, and I doubt you’re going to argue the metal used was the result of an accidental discovery.”

He looked uncomfortable, and for a moment I thought he was going to try, but just sighed. “It’s possible, but unlikely.”

“OK then, does it fit the profile of any earth vessels?”

I knew of about 200 different types of ship out here in space, not all as well as some, and the computer recognition system had hundreds more variations, so if we ran into another ship, we could identify it.

“One or two, but it’s been modified. Also, there’s only six people on board, and from our scan, it seems all were recently in custody at a Mars penitentiary outpost. They were given a so called vaccination which put nanites in their system so they could be recognised if or when they decided to rebel.”

“Are they escaped prisoners?”

“Given the discussion I just had with security, that seems to be the case. But to verify those assumptions I got onto the Mars station, and it seems they are unaware of any missing prisoners or ships, but have sent someone over to check “

“Don’t they guard prisoners anymore?”

“They do, but with robots, and due to the remoteness, infrequent fly bys. They were coming up for one.”

“How infrequent?”

“I was told a few months, but I suspect it’s been longer. As for getting a ship, a well organised gang could have rescued some space junk and brought it back to life. It’s possible. And space still is a bit like the wild west.”

A recent problem, now that there was an ever increasing demand for travel and freight across our particular galaxy. Venus, Mars had galactic hotels, Saturn a space station and fly bys, and mining on various of the planets.

It was disappointing to realise our first contact wasn’t a first contact with a new world, just criminals expanding their horizons.

“Do they have weapons?”

“If we do, they do. We think the two smaller ships are modified troop carriers, the larger vessel, a freighter, but they have tinkered with the exterior to make people think they’re something or someone else.”

“They move pretty fast, much faster that anything we’ve got.”

“Except for this ship which may have surprised them, as well as some of us.”

“Anything else I need to know about?”

“About the other ships no. The military boys will want to join in the discussion of our next move. Something else you might want to know is that we were checking the logs and indemnified where those so called aliens came aboard, and to safely transport from one point to another, you need markers at each end.”

“And you found them?”

“In two places, and immediately removed so there will be no more unwanted boardings.”

“It raises the question…”

“A traitor on board? I don’t believe so, because they looked like they’d been installed as part of the decking. The traitors are back at the space station where the vessel was built.”

“OK. We’d better get everyone in the conference room and work out what we’re going to do next. Don’t go too far.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021

Where the hell are we?

…

When I opened my eyes, there was a moment where I felt I was rising up from the bottom of the ocean, holding my breath, and heading towards the light.

I was in the captain’s seat, and as my vision focussed, I sucked in a huge breath and sat up. There were others in front of me still slumped over their consoles, barely visible in the emergency lighting.

I tried standing intending to go over to the navigation console and felt my legs buckling under me, and had to sit down again.

I heard a groan from behind me, followed by, “What happened?”

It was the Chief Engineer.

I turned just as he attempted to stand and collapsed to the floor.

I tried again, with more success, and walked slowly over to him. That was when a different sort of light illuminated the bridge and, when I turned to see what it was, just saw the edge of a planet come into view.

We were very close, and it seemed the ship had adopted a circumnavigation path. The ship also seemed to be slowly rotating, hence the changing view of the planet.

Others were stirring. I helped the Chief Engineer up.

“Whatever happened,” I said, “we seemed to have traveled to an as-yet-unnamed planet.”

“Mars perhaps?” He sat back at his console.

A voice yelled out, “not Mars sir, Uranus. And in the distance, that reddish-colored moon is Oberon I think.”

Exactly where the alien ship had said there was a colony, under the ice surface.

I turned to the Engineer, “Chief, what’s the state of the ship?”

“It apparently is on standby, awaiting our command. It is as the Navigator says, we are at Uranus, in a geosynchronous orbit.”

The moon that we believed to be Oberon came up on the screen, and standing off it was three ships, the two that we had encountered, and a larger ship, no doubt belonging to the kidnappers.

“Do you have the elapsed time since we started the test?” I was curious how long we had been unconscious.

I would also like to know why were ended up unconscious, but that was a matter for later. The other problem; the three ships would soon discover our arrival and would be curious themselves, and I didn’t like the odds if we had to go into battle.

“Sixty-five earth minutes, sir.”

I’m sure he would tell me just how fast we had traveled soon enough. “I’ve got to get back down to engineering. I’ll have a report as soon as possible, but, if required, we’re on standby for any operation you deem necessary.”

“Very good.” Then, “Any chance we arrived un-noticed?” I asked the navigator.

“No sir. We were just scanned, so they know something is out there.”

I found it surprising that the kidnappers had told me precisely where they were going. Perhaps they had not expected our ship could follow them, and that, until just over an hour ago, was exactly our thoughts too.

“Is it possible to scan the moon, and the planet?”

“In the process of doing so, sir.”

I went over to the military console where the officer was quickly checking all the systems. “Everything online and available?”

“As far as I can tell. We should be able to retaliate if we have to.”

“It may be sooner than we think. One of the ships, a smaller one, is heading in this direction.”

I yelled out, “Anyone needing medical assistance?”

No one replied. It seems they had all suffered the same malaise I had, a period of unconsciousness. Then a series of reports filled the bridge as each officer reported their systems were online and ready.

I then asked the ship’s department heads to report in, and each came back, not asking the obvious question, but to say everything, and everyone, was ok.

Five minutes later, the ship could be seen approaching us, stopping in indeterminable distance from us, but it was quite close, close enough to make out the detail of the outer hull, and, I noticed, for one of the scientists to scan the vessel and take photographs for reference if we needed to know about it later. The first alien ship in our database.

Then a voice came over the communications system, not one of ours. “Hailing earth ship’s captain. We are sending one of your crew back to you, we do not know what is wrong with him.”

The next instant the captain, in a prone poisition, appeared on the deck in front of the chair. “Medical team to the bridge,” I said.

I went over to him, and he appeared asleep. I checked for a pulse, and there wasn’t one. He was cold, and not a good sign.”

“We have him,” I said. “What happened?”

“He collapsed. Our medical people tell me from what they know of your physiology, that he has stopped breathing, and possibly had what you call a heart attack. I assure you we did not harm him, or your other crew member in any way.”

One of the ship’s doctors came out of the elevator and ran over to us, and immediately did a scan. We were the first ship, the first people, in fact, to use the new technology which was supposed to diagnose most of the problems humans could suffer in a matter of minutes.

“He’s dead, sir,” the doctor pronounced. He had brought several others on the medical team, along with the means to transport him back to the hospital.

They carefully lifted the captain onto the mobile stretcher. “Permission to leave, sir?”

I nodded.

The alien captain, if it was him, came back, “We would like to know how your ship managed to get here so quickly. Our knowledge of your technology makes it impossible for you to travel such distances as you have, and especially in that ship.”

“We’re trying to work that out ourselves. Would you like to tell us how you can move so quickly yourself?”

“We have nothing to hide. Perhaps we could meet and discuss it.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021