Short Tale 2
Simon was unfortunately forced to wait for his present from Rob; the group couldn't just have a party the night before they were scheduled to meet with the captain. Especially when it concerned an alien race, insects, and re-animated corpses. The feeling of being back aboard their own ship was enough to push that memory back for awhile, the soldiers guarding their retreat were creeped out enough to get nightmares and they weren't even on the ship.
For now, the group simply sat around in the lounge of sickbay, waiting for the doctor to finish up with his tests.
"What do you think they were doing here?" Rob asked, the memories of the alien vessel took over his entire train of thought; it opened up way too many questions.
"Well, the note said they were heading to reinforce a, what was it... frontier world." Darrik replied, reading over the unfortunate aliens note in his mind. "Well, maybe they just got lost after they were attacked."
"When I was looking over the schematics when I was in the ships network," Simon chimed in. "It looked like at least one engine was mostly repaired, I think their navigation system was messed up and not one of those things noticed."
"If one things for sure, there's obviously a war going on out there," Sarah said, gazing out the nearby window into space. "We just got our first glimpse of two new races and only one of them seems friendly."
"Alright team, all your tests came back clean," Doctor Robins walked back into the room, a data slate in hand. "You can all go back to your quarters now and rest, Sarah I'll be getting your swords back to you tomorrow once I'm done running tests on that liquid you covered them with."
Sarah smirked as she remembered fighting off two of those beings with her swords. "Just be careful with 'em doc."
Roberts smiled and nodded as the team exited sickbay, heading for the mess hall to relax for a bit before turning in.
"Ah, my favorite place on this ship." Rob smiled as they took their seats at their favorite table next to a window.
"Damn, we can't escape that ship can we?" Simon grumbled and looked outside, followed by the others. The dead ship was just visible past one of the Starlight's wings. Even from where they were they got the shivers just looking at it. Only a few of its lights were still functioning, visibly flickering on and off. One thing they never noticed before was the bridge of the alien vessel. It was wide, almost one big window bent into a half circle. The lights there were working perfectly, no flickers, but other than that, they couldn't make anything else out. Other than one long smear.
"Gah, don't look at it," Darrik said turning away. "Hey Mic! Could you close the shades on this window?"
Mic, one of the science officers and part-time bartender looked over at them. "Sure thing guys, getting creeped out by that floating barge eh?"
"Yeah, we've seen whats on it and got our fill." Sarah replied, chuckling a bit. If there was one thing about Mic that everyone noticed, it was how he seemed to draw people out. After a battle with rebels or the like he could cheer everyone up just by being around. The raccoon was a lot of things, he was the head science officer, bartender, ship-wide chess champion, chef, walking thesaurus, and even a councilor.
"By the way Mic, if you ever get the chance you should head down to sickbay," Rob said. "Doc's got some goo from an alien corpse and may need a scientists help."
"Goo?" Mic questioned, cocking his head a bit to the side. "From a corpse? Well doesn't that sound lovely, I'll head down in a bit, thanks for the info."
Simon was the quietest for once, he hadn't been on many missions with the team, the ones he did go on involved him hiding somewhere to hack into this and that. Being attacked by eviscerated corpses was a little too much at once. "Think I'm gonna head off to sleep, get those things out of my mind."
"At least until tomorrow when we get to give our reports to the captain," Darrick stated, patting Simon on the back. "Remember, 0900 hours is when we're to report in. You did good today."
Rob and Sarah gave similar backing, Sarah giving him a nice tight hug before he left for his quarters.
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Simon made his way slowly towards his quarters, mulling over everything he saw on the alien ship, not just the corpses, but the small file in its computer banks. No doubt Sarge was looking it over now, the small amount of undamaged historical information that he managed to download just before Darrik gave the order to return to the ship.
The ship off the port-bow of the Starlight was no indication of technological achievement, it was just like it looked, a transport barge, very low power levels made locating any type of weaponry or shields impossible. But now that they had the files, they would find out these aliens were around the same level of technology as us, maybe a bit more advanced in some areas but that would have to wait to be discovered.
As Simon rounded the last corner he noticed something odd. The end of the hallway he was now in split off into two other halls, one was a short hall leading to about four crewmen's quarters, the other continued on through the ship. The short hall's lights were flickering. Whenever there was a flickering light it would only take a second for the computer to send some more power to it, eliminating the flicker. But the lights in that hall were flickering constantly, as Simon looked at the hallways entrance he swore he could hear scratching.
Being on edge on the alien ship was acceptable, Simon always kept his pistol loose in its holster, but when scratching noises and flickering lights came out of nowhere on his own vessel, Simon got downright scared. He didn't want to see anymore of those corpses.
Simon was always looking out for his crewmates, if he recalled correctly there were about several furs in the four rooms in that hall where the scratching was coming from. He unholstered his pistol, flicking off the safety as he neared the corner. There was a panel right next to it, with it he could call security if something went wrong. He wanted to call now, but the flickering lights could just be a minor malfunction, and the scratching, well, he could only think that noise was in his head.
He prepared himself for the worst, taking a deep breath before swinging around the corner, pistol held up and finger on the trigger. But there was nothing there. Simon breathed a sigh of relief, until he heard the scratching noises again. He kept his pistol out as he crept towards the nearest door, hoping some living fur was inside. 'Crewman Surnn', Simon recognized the name, Surnn was one of the officers in charge of security on this deck, if anything was wrong, he would know about it.
Taking in another deep breath, the nervous fox pressed the door chime, waiting for only a few seconds before Surnn appeared in the doorway. "Hey Simon, something wrong?" He pointed at Simons drawn pistol, looking understandably worried.
"N-no, I was just..." Simon couldn't really explain why he had his pistol drawn in front of an officers quarters, but he tried anyways. "I just came back from that alien ship, it had f-flickering lights all over the place, I was worried something happened here too."
"The only thing that happened was a tiny hull breach in this section," Surnn explained, still looking worried for his crewmate. "It cause a short circuit, engineering still hasn't repaired these damn lights apparently."
Simon reholstered his pistol, his worries seemed silly now that he knew what was causing the flickering noises and the scratching noise. It was a small hull breach, probably just severed a few wires that were still scraping against the inner hull. "Ok, that's good to know."
"You don't look all that great, maybe you should head to sickbay?"
"Nah, I'll be fine, I'm just tired, stressful day you know?"
"Heh, yeah I know that feeling, let me know how your feeling in the morning alright?"
"Yes sir." Simon said as he turned to head back to his quarters. It was a good thing he didn't call security first. He laughed at himself as he stepped into his room and flopped down on his bed, sleep moving in fast.
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"So apparently that vessel is at least a thousand lightyears from its original point?" Captain Russel spoke as he read over the report handed in by Darrik, and another one handed in by Sarge.
"Looking over the engine schematics while I was there proved their propulsion technology isn't all that different from ours, sir." Simon explained. "One thousand lightyears is a pretty reasonable distance given the size of the ship and engine layout."
"For a long time we've been this close to a new race," Russel turned to look out the briefing room's window. "We've been so close to a war that isn't our own. Can anyone hazard a guess about what happened aboard that ship?"
Darrik was the first to speak up. "Well, from that note we recovered its certain that ship was headed for a 'frontier world', something about an insect incursion there."
"Maybe the ship was intercepted?" Rob spoke up. "They could have been boarded without even knowing it on their way to that world."
"We didn't find any holes or breaches on the ships hull," Sarge explained. "I find it hard to believe that something capable of killing so many could get on board that small ship undetected."
"Unless it was already aboard, or if it got aboard by getting through the hull making it look like something natural hit it." Sarah pointed out, looking over the scans of the alien ship. "They might have repaired a breach quickly."
"Uh, sir?" Simon spoke up, a slight quiver in his voice. "There's a small breach in the hull right? Apparently a meteor or something?"
"I think I see what your saying Simon," Russel obviously came to the same conclusion. If this thing could get aboard another vessel by cutting through the hull and making it look like a small meteor impact... "I want security stepped up, the furs in that section should be moved away from the breach location. Its already been repaired so if something did come aboard, it isn't leaving through that hole."
Sarge immediately stood, walking out onto the bridge of the Starlight to sound a general warning to the crew and to move those nearest the breach out of harms way.
"Well, I suppose we've gotten all the information we can from that ship, and I think we should honor this Lucas Hammil's last wish and destroy it." Russel stood, dismissing the team and heading onto the bridge with them to oversee the alien ships destruction.
"Raise shields, lock on three torpedoes to that ship and fire when ready. Use the flak guns to eliminate any small debris that heads our way." Russel sat in the captains chair after patting the gunnery officer on the shoulder.
"Yes sir, shields up," The officer pressed a few more buttons on his console. "Target locked." Another few pressed buttons. "Firing torpedoes."
The agile torpedoes left their hatches, streaking through space visible only by the short trails of light from their fuel compartments. Each torpedo found its mark, one detonating at the back end of the ship, one in its mid-section, and another slamming right into the bridge. The Starlight was far enough away to only receive a slight tremor from the detonation, and the flak cannons opened up, tearing apart any debris large enough to put a dent in the shields, well, what little debris the torpedoes had left behind.
"Put in a call to Mic, he's gonna have to get his team together to figure out what this 'feral radiation' is ASAP." Russel made the final order and left the bridge to personally check in on the engineering crew responsible for the repairs of the breach.
"Sir, keep your nose at the ready, we smelled something like a lemon that past its due date on that ship." Darrik called to him.
The captain waved a hand in acknowledgement as he turned a corner leading to engineering.
"Well, looks like we wont be getting a lot of sleep for the next few days." Rob grumbled, following his friends off the bridge to help Simon move some of his things from his quarters.
"You ok Simon?" Sarah put an arm over his shoulders, pulling him closer to comfort him.
"Well I never thought about something sneaking aboard like that last night, the lights were flickering and there was a scratching noise outside Surnn's quarters." Simon explained, shivering as he thought of how close those furs were to the possible boarding area of such a deadly alien.
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"Well, from the info we got from the alien vessel seems to say that feral radiation is something given off by these 'insects'," Mic was looking over his own report, explaining it to Russel due to its high intensity vocabulary. "We haven't figured out how to pick it up though, that goo Sarah brought back is helping a bit, but it'll be a few days before we can run a full-ship scan with the new calibration."
"We'll need it as soon as possible Mic," Russel sounded agitated, understandably so. "We need to know if something came on board and scans so far show nothing."
"We're working 'round the clock sir, might I suggest sealing off that section the breach occurred in?"
"Already done, apparently you should get worried if you smell a lemony scent."
"I'll keep that in mind sir."
Russel turned down a hall, saluting to Mic as he headed in the opposite direction. "Bridge, scan the entire ship again, make sure everyone is still here."
A few moments of silence, then the crewman's unnerving report. "Sir, three crewmen are unaccounted for, I cant locate them anywhere."
"Find out who they are, locate their quarters and call security, bring us to red alert" Russel ordered, heading back up to the bridge as the glass panels on the wall flashed red and the red alert was activated throughout the ship, followed by Sarge's voice over the comm.
"All crewmen, it is certain we have been boarded by an enemy impervious to our current scanning technology, our science teams are working on a way to locate this enemy, until we can eliminate it, everyone is to evacuate deck three, everyone will carry their personal weapons at all times, and no one, I repeat, no one is to wander the corridors alone. Be on your guard and alert security if you smell a lemony scent near you."
Thankfully Sarge knew about Mic's report, and had listened in on the order to scan the ship for missing personnel. He was a good soldier and am even better second-in-command, if anyone could keep the crew of this ship in order, it would be him.
Still, an alien vessel little a little less than half of the crew size of the Starlight were overrun in a matter of days. Russel's thoughts turned to his crew, all of them had family back home, and already he had three families to contact and deliver bad news. He had to get them through this new crisis, he began to wonder how many crewmen he would lose fighting this thing...
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Well, there's chapter two, can't really say if its longer than the first, jeeze i need to figure out how to lengthen these things. Again, feel free to let me know if im doing ok, or not so ok ^.^