Into the Black: Odyssey One (7 page)

“Sir!” The team saluted as one, coming to rigorous attention.

“As you were,” Weston told them after snapping a return salute. He turned to the pilot, “Samuels, I need to you take the shuttle out again. We’ve found what looks to be a life pod. She’s dead in the water and is going to need some help coming in from the cold.”

Jennifer turned and began walking alongside the Captain as he headed toward the shuttle, “How big is it sir?”

“About eight meters in diameter. Less than that in length. We’ll have to use the Can-Arms to bring it in though. The whole thing is Para-magnetic, standard grapplers won’t lock on.”

Roberts had caught up to them, “uh Sir? What do you mean by ‘we’? You’re needed on the bridge.”

Weston waved him off, “Not this time, Commander. I’m qualified to run the Can-Arms and you aren’t. Hell, since the magnetic grapplers came into use, we only have a handful of people checked out on those things and they are all busy right now. I’m not.”

Roberts moved to argue, then stopped and thought better of it, finally moving back toward the waiting shuttle. Samuels, her co-pilot, and Captain Weston loaded into the shuttle craft and started the pre-flight. The craft hummed as the twin power plants came online and the magnetic gear deactivated and retracted into the craft. A light burn from the lateral thrusters sent the bird gliding smoothly out of the bay before the main power plants engaged, sending the SAR team solidly en route.

*****

Once outside again, Samuels pivoted the shuttle easily and aimed the big craft towards the bright glow of the Archangels power plants circled an invisible point in space. The arbitrary point in space slowly coalesced into a faint outline against the star field, the drifting escape pod coming into view. Samuels slowly aligned the shuttle with the drifting pod, deftly matching its angle and drift with small puffs from the shuttle’s thrusters.

“I guess I’m up,” Weston headed aft as the co-pilot booted up the shuttles LDS, Life Detection Software, and began running the sensor data through the program.

“Whoa… Sir. It looks like we’ve got a live one here. There’s a heat source in there…” the co-pilot announced. Ensign Ryan stopped dead for a long moment, blinking in shock and surprise. After a long moment, he shook his head slowly and pivoted around to look at his Captain. “Uh Sir… I’m not sure I believe this myself, but the sensors read the pod as having one human occupant. They read the match out as having a ninety-seven percent certainty rating.”

Weston stopped for a moment, staring incredulously. “Ninety-seven? We only get a ninety-three percent reading from our own ships.”

“I know that Sir,” the man shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know how to explain it. . . . The only thing I can think of is that, it is a human in there and the pod is Para-magnetic, for a reason. The material seems to be designed for easy sensor penetration. We should see if we can’t find out how to make it.”

After a moment’s silence he spoke up again, his tone facetious. “Of course, it could be an alien bogey man, who’s spoofing our sensors.”

“I’ll turn that idea over to the guys in the science division when we get back,” Weston grinned wryly as he extended the Can-Arms toward the drifting pod. “In the meantime, let’s prepare for a guest.”

“Yes Sir,” the co-pilot replied as Eric manipulated the controls.

The long robotic arms extended slowly from the bottom of the shuttle, long pincers on the arms closed over two obtrusions on the pod. As the clamps tightened, the Pod slipped through their mechanical grip as Eric moved to compensate. As he tried to grab it again, the left arm overcompensated and struck the pod lightly, putting it into a tumble.

“Damn it,” Weston cursed under his breath as the pincers slipped free and the pod began drifting away. “Samuels adjust your vertical vector by point three two, the pod’s trying to slip away.”

“Yes sir,” the Lieutenant deftly adjusted the shuttle’s course, following the escaping pod.

“Thanks. Trying again,” Weston’s face was beginning to bead with sweat as he extended the arms again and closed the pincers over the obtrusions, this time tightly. “All right, got him hooked. Time to reel him in.”

The two Can-Arms began to retract, pulling the shuttle to the pod and locking them together firmly. Once the arms were locked in place, Lt. Samuels fired the thrusters and started the shuttle on a return vector to the Odyssey.

“Sir, the contents of the pod read as oxygen/nitrogen, breathable but high on the carbon dioxide levels. . . . Looks like a purification system on its last legs,” the co-pilot shrugged, “assuming he breathes air and my instruments aren’t all screwed up.”

“Damn. Ok, suit up, both of you. I’m going to open up the spam can and see what we’ve won,” Weston ordered as he grabbed for his own pressure helmet.

After they had sealed their environmental suits, Weston opened the pressure hatch in the floor, accessing the portable airlock that had slid into place from the small storage of them, which were standard on this class of shuttle.

“Ryan, get over here and pass me the laser cutter.”

“Yes sir,” the co-pilot slid from his seat and grabbed the cutter from a locker, amidships.

Weston primed the cutter and focused it on the Pods hull, slicing through the material like a knife through butter. “Hey Ryan, I think I will send a sample of this to the research labs. The material is vaporizing rather than melting, we’re not going to have to worry about slag floating around.”

After a few moments of slicing, Weston had completed a decent size circle and kicked the floating obstruction into the pod. Retrieving a lamp from Ensign Ryan, he peered into the pod looking for the survivor. Strapped into a harness along the curved side of the cylinder was the source of the life readings, a slumped form whose limbs were drifting slightly in the null gravity of the pod, her face obscured by drifting strands of raven black hair. Weston slipped himself through the hole feet first and alighted gently on the relative floor of the pod, unstrapping the survivor took less than a minute and he was passing the unfortunate woman back through the hole to Ensign Ryan. After a brief glance around Weston followed suit, leaving the dark interior of the escape pod behind.

“Take us back to the Odyssey Samuels, we’ll disengage the pod near the port bay and let the tug push it in.”

“Yes Sir, strap your selves in and make sure our passenger is comfortable. We’re going home.”

Chapter 5

Back on the Odyssey, the shuttle was met by an E-Med team in full biohazard gear, who quickly hustled the unconscious survivor from the flight deck. Weston himself, on the other hand, was met by Stephanus as he stepped down the shuttle gangplank.

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Stephanus slipped easily into step with Weston as he headed for the ships lift.

“What are you talking about, Steph?” Eric asked, knowing damn well what the younger man was complaining about.

“Do you realize that half the Angels out there went weapons hot when they heard you were taking a shuttle out yourself?” Steph asked half angrily, half resigned. “Christ on a crutch, Cap, I had to hold them back from cleansing the entire sector! Though, frankly, I almost gave the ok. This is a God damned warzone, Eric.”

Weston glanced over at his ex-wingman, “I appreciate the sentiment but I was hardly defenceless out there and the area was pacified.”

Stephanus snorted quietly as they stepped into the lift, “pacified? Hell we just arrived on the scene. We had no way of knowing what types of ordinances were still floating around out there. You know that better than most, hell… You know how many people we lost in the Bering, after the battle was ‘over’. . . . Remember Clarke? He made it all the way back to base, only to have an unexploded shell take him out on landing approach!”

Weston looked over at Stephanus, a wry smile playing across his mouth, “I was expecting Roberts to bring this up, not you, Steph. It was a calculated risk, besides the ’Angels and the Odyssey were in the area to cover me.”

Stephanus just muttered something under his breath, the words lost as the lifts doors slid open and they stepped out into the forward habitat section. Weston headed straight for the bridge, splitting away from Stephanus, who headed toward the Archangels ‘barracks’.

“You watch yourself, Cap!” The younger pilot said as a parting shot, as they split up, “This isn’t the Angels, and you aren’t flying solo, anymore.”

Eric sighed as he watched Steph turn a corner and vanish from sight. The worst of it was that the younger man was right. He shook his head and continued to the Bridge.

Command sucks.

*****

On the Bridge, Commander Roberts was examining accumulated data on the debris field when Captain Weston stepped onto the bridge. Eric walked over to him, glancing at the data over the Commander’s shoulder for a brief second before speaking.

“How much is there?” Weston was genuinely curious about that. Even before he’d gone outside, it had been obvious that there was quite a lot of debris in the area. Since Samuels had been forced to alter course no less than five times on the comparatively short trip, he knew that the field was extraordinarily dense.

Roberts started, twisting in the chair to look up at Weston, “A lot Captain, between ten and fifteen ships at the very least. The scary part is that they all appear to have been of the same origins, same design, materials, and markings on what’s left of the hulls. Looks either some type of internal conflict, maybe a civil war, or they tangled with one nasty group of Tangos.”

Weston picked up a PDA and scanned through the highlights resulting from the Odysseys’ continual scanning, “Send out shuttles and retrieval probes to get samples of everything of interest, and tell all the labs to be ready to analyse what they bring back. I’m going down to the medical lab to check the status of our guest. Contact Dr. Palin and ask him to meet me there.”

“Yes Sir,” Roberts nodded, tapping out a command on his console.

“And have the Sensor techs see if they can’t backtrack the trajectories,” Weston said over his shoulder, as he walked out. “I’d like to know where they came from.”

“Aye Sir.”

*****

He grabbed the nearest lift, heading straight for the Med lab. The woman they had picked up from the pod would likely be waking up soon if the preliminary scans they had done with the shuttles emergency gear was accurate. She had been suffering from dehydration and lack of oxygen but was otherwise fit.

Eric was willing to bet that this was going to be one hell of a story, one for the history books, even. If, and he had to admit that it was a big ‘if’, they could understand her.
Token linguist. Let’s hope he’s half as good as that file implied.

Because, God help them all, it seemed that an awful lot was currently resting in the somewhat eccentric, if not downright mad, hands of Doctor Edward Palin. So Weston was understandably perturbed when he stepped off the pod and nearly ran over the subject of his thoughts, who was apparently kneeling on the floor in front of the lift door.

“Doctor! What are you doing down there?” Weston blinked as he caught himself against the wall, staring down at the not-quite-prostrate man.

“Oh hello, Captain. I was waiting for you, of course,” the Doctor replied, standing up and brushing himself down as casually as if he’d just got up from a mess table.

Weston stopped for a moment, his mouth working as he tried to find words to convey thoughts he wasn’t certain he was having. “Okay. . . . I can accept that. What you’re doing on the floor in front of the lift, however, is still a mystery.”

Palin paused for a moment, looking confused “the floor? Oh the floor. Ah yes. . . . the floor…”

Weston waited, obviously expecting Palin to continue but the doctor just began walking toward the med-labs, pausing only to look back at Weston for the briefest of moments before shrugging his shoulders and continuing. Weston looked after him for a while and with a disgusted shake of his head, followed in the doctor’s footsteps.

*****

The medical labs were swarming with people in lab coats. Apparently word of the survivor had slipped out to the other science departments. Weston cut a swath through the assembled scientists, momentarily distracting their attention from the beleaguered doctor standing between them and the object of their fascination.

“That’s it, all of you, out of here, in 2 minutes. If anybody but Doctor Rame, myself, and Doctor Palin are still in this area, I all have them hauled off to the brig.”

The room cleared out in a little under a minute, despite the grumbles of the retreating white coats. Doctor Rame looked at Weston in gratitude, flushed and flustered as he was. Normally he was in full command of his medical facility. To lose control to a mob had flustered him severely.

“Thank you, Captain. I assume you’re here to check up on our guest?” The doctor wrapped his tongue deliberately around the word guest, as if trying it on for size, then shook his head slightly as if the word didn’t quite fit.

“Yes Doctor. How is she?”

“Human,” Rame snorted, the word slipping out before he could stop it. “I mean she’s fine, Captain. Slight case of dehydration and some unusual cellular damage but that seems to be healing relatively quickly. Other than that she’s in extremely good shape.”

“When will she wake up?” Doctor Palin asked.

“I don’t know for sure, probably within a few hours, she’s also shown some signs of extreme fatigue so it’s best to let her rest, at this point. We have an IV drip administering fluids so she can sleep as long as necessary,” the Doctor said, already picking up a large tablet computer and jotting a note down with a Stylus.

Odd habit,
Weston thought, and then just shrugged it off. Some people didn’t like dictating to computers, he knew. Stephanus was one of them, though Eric knew that his former wingman had always used a standard keyboard rather than a stylus, claiming that he felt like a complete idiot talking to a computer as if he expected some intelligent response.