Chapter 14 #2
The view outside the shuttle slowly dissolved into flickering lights. Tim had shut down the shuttle’s engines, when he realized that they were having no impact and might be overheating.
Without the rumble of the engines, the cockpit felt wrong. The questions from the others were distant, almost muddy sounding. There was no sensation of movement, but never the less, he was certain they were moving.
Or changing locations.
Navigation was completely offline. So were sensors. Power and life support were both stable.
The lights outside began to settle into a flickering pattern and then even the lights slowly began to fade, leaving a dense darkness behind.
It reminded him of the darkness that had seemed to enclose the entity. Were they inside it? But how and why? And if not that, then what?
These kinds of questions were ones he usually left to his captain, or others higher up in the chain of command. His skill set consisted mostly of breaking things, shooting things, and flying things.
He became aware of an easing in the darkness, a different kind of light beginning to grow. It had a dark center, surrounded by shades of green and yellow.
No, it was two lights. It stopped closing on them and then a shutter came down over the lights and lifted again.
“I think,” Riina said, her voice shaky, “those are…eyes.”
He hoped she was wrong, but he feared she wasn’t. In his experience, Riina was mostly correct in her deductions.
“I believe you are correct.” Veirn’s voice was a quiet contrast with the pounding of Tim’s heart. He’d almost forgotten the AI fragment was on board, it had been quiet for so long.
“Eyes!” Drun’s voice rose in pitch as if each letter were a single sound.
Fred made a sound that Tim felt could be interpreted as unhappy. He’d have made one, too, if his throat hadn’t dried so completely.
The eyes did appear to be very large.
The eyes tilted, or the head that housed the eyes tilted to one side. If it was a head, it was a large one. Tim thought he saw a darker shadow below the eyes that could have been nostrils.
Then a gap appeared below the nostrils, and sound emerged.
Amazingly, the ship’s translation program converted the words. Or it thought it had. How could they know?
“What is it?”
The original eyes eased back, and two more eyes came into view. It was still so dark that Tim couldn’t see much detail beyond the eyes, possible nose, and mouth.
“It is a ship.”
“But where from? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
This voice was different. So, Tim’s eyes didn’t deceive him.
There were two aliens regarding them. Them?
Or the shuttle? Tim wondered, a little vaguely, how the group in the rear of the shuttle would process these aliens?
He kind of hoped he never found out. Hopefully they could resolve this without that happening.
“A ship would be carrying something.”
“Yes.”
Riina reached forward, her hand hesitating over the broadcast control, then she flipped the switch.
“Hello.”
Hopefully the ship would translate this acceptably. If it didn’t, things could go south very quickly.
Both sets of eyes blinked.
“Did it speak?”
“I believe it did.”
The eyes moved closer to them and appeared to be studying them, if the up and down movement of the eyes were a correct indication.
“We are inside the object you are looking at,” Riina said. “We are life forms.”
One of the eyes came closer, until it was almost pressed up against their forward view screen. It blinked several times before it retreated.
“I believe there is something in here.”
“The ship has passengers. Interesting.”
“What if they get out?” The other voice was curious, not terribly concerned.
“We could get out, but we aren’t certain we could survive.” She said to Tim, “I also transmitted our requirements for life.”
A large digit appeared out of the darkness and poked the shuttle. It rocked a little, not badly.
“You should not have gotten into our…”
The ship struggled with a translation, Tim noted.
“We did not mean to,” Riina said. “We were on a mission to rescue some of our kind when we were intercepted by…you.”
She glanced at Tim, and half shrugged.
“We will have to consult…”
Again, the translation failed.
“I’m guessing it, or they, are talking about their chain of command,” Tim offered. He hoped he was correct. No question they were in a tight spot. And a weird spot.
Both sets of eyes faded back into the darkness.
“What was that?” Drun’s voice made a demand, but it was, Tim decided more bravado than anything. “It, or they, were large.”
The man must realize they were as confused as he was.
“Yes, they were,” Tim agreed. He’d encountered larger aliens in his years aboard the Najer, but never anything like this. He had, he realized, picked the wrong time to become human again.
“What was it?” Drun asked again, though with a distinct quaver in his voice this time.
“There is no match in our database for the entity or entities,” the Veirn fragment said. “But I am creating a file.”
Somehow Tim didn’t find this that comforting. For the file to be added to any larger database, they’d need to survive.
The entity had shrunk to what his systems said was its original configuration when they’d first spotted it.
They should have been able to make contact with their people now. It was no longer over the area identified as the rendezvous coordinates.
But still no contact.
The contact screen flickered several times, then steadied into…he wasn’t sure what.
Something white filled the image with just a black circle in the center. There was sound, but nothing he recognized.
“I am attempting to translate,” Veirn said. “It is a challenging language.”
The AI had been designed to translate unknown languages, but even it needed time and content to do it.
The words switched as they came again.
“It is broadcasting in one of the languages of Arroxan Prime,” Veirn said.
“Unknown vessel, it is advised not to approach the planet until it has stabilized from…”
There was something that Veirn obviously couldn’t translate, even using the Arroxan Prime data.
“We have people down there,” Kellen said, hoping they could retranslate what Veirn was sending. “We have been unable to make contact with them…”
But then the entity contracted to a small light and jumped away.
They were gone.
And there was no sign or sound of the shuttle and their people.