Deep Space - Hidden Terror (The Stasis Stories #6) Read online

  Since they didn’t expect anything to happen with the aliens for a while, Massey suggested some of the crew should go back into stasis to limit the consumption of supplies. Lee agreed but suggested they all tour the ship together first.

  Because they couldn’t know who might recognize how some odd object on board might be used as a weapon.

  They toured, but the only weapon they found beyond the Tasers and pepper spray was a nine-millimeter pistol, also in the arms locker. When asked why she hadn’t mentioned it, Massey laughed and said her pacifist nature may have led her to suppress the memory of its existence.

  One of the junior crew pointed out that if the ETs shot some kind of beam weapon at them, Maui might use its big reflector/solar sail/ drogue to reflect the beam back at them.

  Almost apologetically, Jones shot that down, pointing out that the big concave reflector would focus the beam on its optical receptors, not back at the aliens.

  The crewwoman shook her head. “That’d be true if we aimed the big dish right at them. But if we aim it halfway between two of their ships, it’d bounce the shot from one ship over at the other one.”

  Jones gave her a look and a moment.

  The crewwoman shook her head again. “Sorry. I’m an idiot. The beam from one ship’s still going to get focused by the dish. Then it’ll spread back out from the focal point. It wouldn’t reach them with the kind of concentration needed to do any damage.” She frowned a moment, then tentatively said, “Maybe we could hide behind the dish anyway? Just to keep from getting hit by the beam.”

  Jones patiently said, “LaTanya, our entire hull’s made of Stade. Beam weapons won’t hurt us. If we had a big flat area on the hull, maybe we could bounce their beams back at them, but our hull’s cylindrical.”

  LaTanya shook her head frustratedly. “Sorry. You’re right. Stupid idea!”

  Lee said, “Don’t let it get you down. Especially don’t become afraid to offer your suggestions. I’d rather hear a lot of ridiculous ideas in hopes of getting a good one, than have you guys get to be too timid to offer them up.”

  After the meeting broke up, Lee spent some time trying to think about ways to carry the fight to the aliens if necessary but didn’t come up with much. And, why would I? she thought. I have no military training or experience. I’ve never been interested in war or fighting. I haven’t even taken a self-defense course…! After a moment she thinks, But I could do what I usually do when I’m up against something I can’t figure out.

  She looked at the time. In the morning, after I’ve thought about it some more, I’ll send Kaem a query.

  ***

  Diddiq hadn’t slept nearly long enough when a knock came on the door of his tiny cubby. When he answered, it was a crewhaliq who told Diddiq that Captain Rabaq thought he’d be interested in what the solians were doing.

  I’d better find it interesting, Diddiq thought irritatedly, as he pulled himself out of the cubby and started down the hall behind the crewhaliq.

  When he arrived at the bridge, Diddiq noticed Rabaq looked exhausted. At first, he felt some vindictive pleasure that the haliq who’d had him awakened looked even more tired than Diddiq felt. Then he realized Rabaq had been on the bridge every time Diddiq had been there and was certainly there a lot of the time Diddiq wasn’t. After a moment’s thought, he stepped over and spoke quietly enough that he didn’t think anyone else would be able to hear the signal he emitted. “Captain Rabaq,” he said, “I truly appreciate your diligence but you’re looking like you need some rest. Don’t be afraid to take some. We can’t afford to have you fail your duty because you’re too weary to think.”

  For a moment Rabaq looked irritated that he’d been so admonished, then the slant of his antennae turned grateful instead. Lifting them affirmatively, he quietly said, “Yes, sir.”

  Rabaq indicated a plot on his screen and spoke in a normal tone. “As you can see here, Expedition Leader, the solian ship’s trajectory is converging on our ships. As you ordered, we had Kasuq’s computer convert your drawings of a haliq and of our base six numbering system into the crude grid images they use and send them to the solians.

  “The solian ship recently sent the following images back,” Rabaq said, indicating a new image on the screen. The first image appeared roughly similar to the plot that had been on the screen a moment before. It showed two ships converging, indicating the future paths of the ships with dashed lines. The smaller, presumably solian, ship curved in to parallel the larger haliq ship.

  “It looks like they’re saying they’re going to come close, but not into contact?” Diddiq said.

  “That’s our interpretation too,” Rabaq said.

  “Will we be able to tell if they’re actually doing this and not simply flying past us?”

  Rabaq nodded. “Because of its greater acceleration, by the time it catches up to us and our paths converge it’ll be going significantly faster than we are. Therefore, it’ll need to flip ends and decelerate if it wishes to match courses as suggested by the image.”

  “We need to make contact to be able to obtain specimens. Any idea how we can make that happen?”

  Rabaq indicated the screen. “Here’s the next image they sent us.”

  The picture showed the two ships fairly close to one another. A dotted line extended from the big haliq ship to the small solian one and terminated in an even tinier ship. It seemed to indicate that the haliq were to send a tiny ship over to the small solian ship. Diddiq studied it a moment, then looked up at the captain, “You think they’re suggesting that once they’ve pulled alongside, we can send a shuttle over to them?”

  Rabaq raised his antennae affirmatively.

  “Are they so naïve they haven’t considered the possibility we might attack?” Diddiq asked.

  “It seems so.”

  “Why wouldn’t they send a shuttle to us?” Diddiq asked musingly. “Then if we attacked it, they could flee with their higher acceleration.”

  “Their ship is small. Perhaps it doesn’t have a shuttle.”

  “Ah…” Diddiq pondered a minute. “This seems almost too perfect to believe. We can arm the shuttle’s crew and see if they can snatch specimens or even take over the solians’ ship. In case our haliq fail to overcome them, we’ll send an atomic weapon in the shuttle that can be used to destroy their ship. Then, if we didn’t succeed in getting specimens, we can send more shuttles after their ship’s major fragments. We can collect biological and technological specimens from the pieces. After all, the biological specimens don’t need to be alive as long as some cells are intact enough to harvest DNA.”

  “That’s brilliant!” Rabaq said admiringly.

  They spent some time going over a plan and deciding which haliq to awaken from hibernation. They would want haliq that were known to be aggressive as well as familiar with lethal fighting. Also, ones that could be psychologically prepared to sacrifice their own lives if necessary.

  ***

  When she got up in the morning, Lee learned that Phoenix had set up a rendezvous with the hindmost alien ship for 10 AM. The ET’s ship was going to send over a shuttle.

  The thought filled Lee with dread, though she wasn’t sure why.

  At 6 AM Eastern Time, Lee sent her message to Kaem.

  Kaem,

  We’ve been trying to figure out what we could do if the aliens turn out to be inimical. If they damage or destroy Phoenix, what could we do to fight? We’ve gone through Maui, looking for inventory that we could use to arm ourselves but none of us are fighters. In hopes you’ll recognize that something on board could be used as a weapon if it becomes necessary, I’m attaching the shipping manifest for the holds, almost all stuff that was to be delivered to Ceres. The only thing I see that looks at all promising is a large quantity of liquid nitrogen that shipped out to replenish Ceres’ atmosphere. I know liquid nitrogen’s cold enough to cause injury but can’t figure out a way to shoot it at them. We also have some water intended for Ceres. I’ve had vague ideas of
hydrolyzing it to oxygen and hydrogen and then making some kind of flamethrower but feel like we’d need to liquefy it so we could squirt it at them and we don’t have any equipment for that.

  Hoping you can make some suggestions?

  Just don’t want to feel helpless if it does come to a fight. Especially if there’s something we could be doing now to get ready to hold our own.

  Thanks,

  Lee

  The message would take a little over an hour to reach Earth and a little longer than that to return from Earth to SC Maui. They were decelerating to match trajectories with SC Phoenix and the incoming aliens, but, as yet, Maui was still moving away from Earth. Obviously, there’d need to be some additional time for Kaem to consider her query and formulate a reply, even if he got the message immediately on its arrival.

  Lee sighed. If Kaem didn’t get the message and reply to it before 10 AM, transmissions from Phoenix would distract him as it kept everyone up to date on its interactions with the ET’s ship.

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself, we won’t match courses with the alien ourselves until tomorrow.

  Of course, she thought, if it takes longer than a day to create whatever weapon Kaem might suggest, it could matter very much.

  They planned to come to a matching course that paralleled the aliens but was at a distance of 1,000 kilometers. A standoff distance that seemed more than enough to keep them safe from whatever weapons the ETs might wield, Though, she thought, since we have no idea what weapons they might have; we also have no idea how far away we’d need to be.

  ~~~

  No reply had come from Kaem by the time SC Phoenix finished matching courses with the hindmost of the alien vessels. As the crew of Maui each started watching one of the multiple feeds from Phoenix, Lee resigned herself to the likelihood that she wouldn’t get a reply from Kaem until it was too late. Should’ve sent it last night, she thought grimly.

  She’d assigned herself to watch the feed from General Martin’s head-mounted camera, while Ray Jones, the first officer, would be watching the feed from Rene Lasalle, the UN diplomat. Two other crew members were going to be watching feeds from two of the six other men under General Martin’s command.

  Massey, SC Maui’s captain, and Rick, one of the crewmen, would be following the big picture, both on the feed from Phoenix’s exterior camera that would be watching the alien ship, and on a display of what they were picking up with Maui’s smaller Stade reflector telescope that unshipped from within the spacecraft’s body. Since they were currently decelerating toward the aliens, the big dish that doubled as a drogue was pointing the wrong way.

  Two more of the crew would be watching feeds from Phoenix’s captain and first officer, even though the Phoenix’s flight crew shouldn’t be involved in the interaction.

  They would record all the feeds coming from Phoenix, but Lee knew real-time viewing was important. Studying engineering failures had taught her that if you wanted to understand an event expeditiously you had to have people watching in real-time. Those people could give you an idea which cameras had shown things worth reviewing first. Otherwise, going back to watch recordings could take forever.

  They just didn’t have enough people to watch the feeds from all of the general’s men or all of Phoenix’s crew or Lee would have had them monitored too. As well as all the other stationary cameras on board Phoenix.

  Hopefully, Earth has people watching all of them and will tell us—though with some delay—about any important things we miss.

  General Martin had chosen to put six of his twelve men, including Major Cohen, his second in command, into temporary stasis as a backup force. They were stazed in full space combat suits and would automatically come out of stasis thirty minutes after the enemy shuttle arrived.

  Lee wondered whether this strategy would prove to be genius or idiotic. Martin’s idea was that if the aliens treacherously attacked the SC Phoenix, capturing himself, Lasalle, and the other six men, that Cohen and the others would come out of stasis to surprise the ETs, freeing Lasalle, Martin, and his men—or meting out revenge if the aliens killed rather than capturing the first team.

  Lee thought she’d rather have all twelve men at her back for the first meeting. I don’t want to be avenged; I want to be kept alive.

  The diplomatic/military team was waiting at the ship’s large airlock that’d been identified to the aliens as the entrance on pictures Phoenix had sent. The aliens had seemed to understand the diagrams. Lee quietly asked Jones, “Do you know why all our guys are on one side of the airlock’s opening? Shouldn’t they be on both sides so they’d surround the ETs?”

  Jones said, “I think that’d be true if they were armed with blades. But our guys are armed with guns. I don’t think you want your people on both sides for fear of shooting your own people in a crossfire.”

  “Oh,” Lee said, thinking, Of course! Then, Why in the hell am I trying to take on the role of leader for our team? I know nothing about fighting. If it comes to a fight, I should put Ray in charge!

  The light on the airlock turned green and one of the men stepped forward and undogged it. He gave it a pull, then stepped aside as the door slowly swung open.

  Something flew through the opening when it was only six inches wide. Then, from the other side, a clawed appendage that looked like a big bird’s foot wrapped in silver grabbed the handle and slammed the door back shut.

  For a moment General Martin’s view—and therefore Lee’s—followed the object as it bounced.

  Then Lee’s viewpoint twisted dizzyingly as Martin’s voice shouted, “Grenade!”

  Lee couldn’t tell much with all the motion artifact on the screen she was watching, but she had the impression the general and his men were surging back away from the door.

  There was a bright flash, a loud bang, and another big jerk in the motion displayed on the screen. The view tumbled and broke up with motion artifact.

  After a few very long seconds, the view settled to immobility. It now pointed along what at first Lee thought was a wall, but suddenly realized was the floor.

  Is the general dead or unconscious? she wondered in horror.

  The people around her on Maui were exclaiming and cursing in shock.

  Despite the sick feeling in her stomach, Lee managed to raise her voice and speak fairly steadily, “Okay! Seems like it really was a grenade and that it went off. My feed from the general has gone stationary, suggesting that he’s either dead or unconscious. Are any of your people moving?”

  “The ambassador’s camera’s out,” Ray Jones said from beside her. “I’m bringing up the hallway camera.”

  One of the four head-mounted cameras they had at the scene, the ambassador’s, was out. One of the three that still showed video was displaying an unmoving image of the back of someone else’s uniform. The other showed a stationary close-up of the floor. When Lee glanced back at the view from the general’s camera, it hadn’t moved. She realized it was looking back down the hall away from the airlock. Scars and pockmarks stitched the walls of the hallway. She started to look away, then turned back when something moved and thus caught her eye.

  It took Lee several seconds to realize she was watching a pool of blood expanding away from her point of view and across the floor.

  “Captain Massey?” Lee asked, abruptly feeling a need for formality. “Could you detect the detonation from your ship-mounted cameras?”

  Massey said she couldn’t, suggesting the blast wasn’t powerful enough to shake the entire vessel. The cameras mounted on the Phoenix’s captain and first officer hadn’t detected the shockwave either, but they had recorded the sudden head movements of the officers when they heard the detonation. The captain had stepped over to the arms locker and started handing out pistols. Lee felt relieved that the crew of SC Phoenix had plenty of pistols rather than mostly Tasers and pepper spray like Maui’s locker.

  But I wouldn’t want to be them, Lee thought with dismay. They’ve got an enemy in the airlock t
hat’s just killed or seriously injured everyone in the greeting party, And the remainder of the soldiers on board are going to be in stasis for… she glanced at the running counter, another eighteen minutes!

  It felt as if more than twelve minutes had passed since the armored men went into stasis.

  Jones said, “Ms. Lee, looks like the ETs are coming aboard.”

  Lee looked over at the video on the first officer’s screen. It was showing the airlock hallway from a wall-mounted camera. The first thing she saw was that the grenade had completely ripped off the lightweight wallboard and flooring from the underlying Stade in the area near the door. Closer to the camera the shrapnel pockmarks patterned the coverings.

  The airlock door had swung open.

  A moment later a box with a lens came through the gap. Camera, Lee thought. It moved about, then pulled back in as the airlock door opened wider.

  A six-limbed alien entered through the lock door. It promptly skidded on the exposed, frictionless Stade and fell slowly in the low gravity. Unfortunately, it slid across and fetched up onto the intact flooring where it rose onto its back four limbs without difficulty. The rear pair of limbs were heavy and the middle set looked to be of a medium thickness. The front limbs were gracile and had the bird’s foot claws they’d seen briefly earlier. As the alien walked on the middle and hind legs, the segment of the body ahead of the middle limbs flexed upward like the trunk of a centaur.

  Except for a clear dome, silvery material swathed the entire alien. It was inflated as if the pressure in the suit was higher than that on board Phoenix. Lee wondered whether the ETs lived at a higher pressure and so needed a pressure suit, or had over-pressurized their suit to make sure no Terran toxins or organisms entered. Or, maybe it’s the spacesuit the alien used to get into the airlock and they just haven’t taken it off.