Far From Home: The Complete Second Series (Far From Home 13-15) (13 page)

47.

"Look," Rayne said as Gary Belcher and Selena Walker approached from down the corridor. Olivia and Lieutenant Jackson stood directly in front of a display showing several suits of armour, old fashioned sword-like weapons. A kind of lance, and something that could only be a whip of some sort.

"Very peculiar," Walker said. She noted the design of the armour, too. "It's almost ceremonial."

"What do you mean?" Jackson asked.

"You know, something you might wear to a special occasion, or a coming of age test. It almost looks
–" Selena started to say.

"–
feudal," Jackson interjected.

"Yes," Walker said. "Definitely feeling the warrior vibe with all of this."

Olivia started to walk off. "And that's not all of it."

The others followed her into a large oval room, crammed from floor to ceiling with consoles and displays. Not one seat in the whole place. There was no display screen, like most Union vessels, but some kind of holodisplay emitter at the centre of the room.

"This has to be a bridge," Belcher said. "Just looking at the layout, the design. It's clearly intended to orchestrate events."

"If it's not a bridge then it's a war room," Jackson said.

"There was a class of Union runners that had bridges like this," Belcher explained. "Back a century or more. They were like the old submarines from Earth's history. You ever seen one of those things?"

Olivia nodded. "Yeah in a museum one time."

"Well, they had something similar. Only it was a cube with displays on each side, and that sat in the middle of the bridge," Belcher told her. "But still, very much like this."

"So this is where they control the
Enigma
from," Walker said.

"Or would've," Olivia said. "If they were here
. . ."

48.

"Well, I won't be too long," Dana Oriz said as she hefted the sack containing the scorpion up off the deck.

"They're already at the other side of the airlock, waiting," Chang told her.

"Right. See you soon," Dana said and donned her helmet. Lieutenant Chang watched her walk off toward one of the elevators that would take her to the airlock.

*

Olivia Rayne answered her comm. and smiled the moment she heard Chang's voice.

"Lisa!"

Jackson threw her a strange look, so she went to one side and spoke in a lower voice. Selena and Gary had gone back out to get another look at the swords and armour.

"Lisa, I didn't know you were going to call," Olivia said. "Boy oh boy, have we found some stuff over here."

"Thought I'd surprise you,"
Chang said.
"Doctor Oriz has just gone up to the airlock. They're taking that creature aboard now to study."

"Oh. Will you be all right over there on your own like that?"

"Sure. They've shown us no interest. We're going to try and get some decent footage of them, though, once Dana comes back."

"Good. We're having a storm here."

"Same as what we had here in C-1,"
Chang said.
"It'll pass."

Olivia took a deep breath. "Lisa, I
–"

"Yep, I know,"
Chang told her.
"Me too."

"See you soon?" Olivia asked.

"You bet, Liv. Even if I have to travel down there in that storm,"
Chang said.
And do me a favour, will you?"

"Anything."

"Stay safe."

*

When Dana returned to C-1, she and Commander Chang followed the first scorpion they could find, filming its every move. They watched as it cleaned every surface it came into contact with, using its mouth. With its claws it picked up anything out of place. A ball of dust blew in front of it, and the two women watched in surprise as it neatly plucked it out of the air and slipped the dust ball into its mouth.

Yet again, they observed as the scorpions disappeared into the floor, and yet were unable to open the hatches themselves, let alone get a real glimpse of what was down there.

"This is the skin, and that's the flesh underneath," Dana stated after they watched yet another of the scorpion creatures do a disappearing act on them.

"Then in this case the flesh truly does crawl," Chang was quick to answer.

49.

Dr. Clayton removed his gloves. Jessica looked at the milky, blue fluid splattered up the front of his apron. The scorpion lay on its back, legs splayed out, underbelly cut open.

"So?" she asked him.

Clayton took a deep breath. "Far as I can tell, it's biomechanical."

"
Bio
mechanical?"

He nodded. "Yes. There are parts of it that are wholly organic, side by side with mechanical components. And there's parts of it that seem
. . . well, a bit of both. As I said, biomechanical. A melding of organic tissues and mechanical parts."

"Right. So this thing's not strictly a robot."

Clayton laughed. "Far from it." He indicated the blood on his apron.

Jessica watched as he tossed his gloves, apron and face mask in the waste, then followed him into his office.

"Have you ever seen anything like that before?" she asked him.

Clayton sat down. Behind them in the medical bay, the nurses dealt with the corpse of the scorpion. It would be frozen and put into storage until they could get back to Station 6.

"Of course, there are replicants, but they're not strictly biomechanical," Clayton explained. "Artificially created beings, modified to have certain traits. This is different, though."

"Yes. These are, as you say, a mix. Do you know if the Union has ever tried such a thing?" Jessica asked him.

Clayton's eyes fixed on her own for a moment. "It's not public knowledge, and I'm not even sure I should be telling you this . . ."

"Go on," she urged him.

Clayton sat forward, his voice lowered to a near whisper. "As you know, I have contacts here and there. It's one of the reasons I was able to get hold of your new meds. Call it a kind of black market, but not quite. It's hard to explain. Anyway, years ago I got talking to a contact of mine. Said he'd seen some things. Stumbled upon a Union facility on a backwater planet."

"Which planet?"

Clayton shook his head. "He didn't say. Only that it was one of those frontier jobs. You know, far away from everything. They live practically a wild west existence in those places."

"So what did he see?"

Clayton's eyes were heavy. "Jess, he told me he saw an army of Union soldiers on manoeuvres. But they weren't human and they weren't replicants. He said they were . . . something else. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it sounded an awful lot like what I've just cut open on that table. The traits he described to me would fall in line with something containing organic and mechanical body parts."

Jessica let that sink in. "I wonder if that's why we've really been sent here."

"What do you mean?" Clayton asked.

"It's probably nothing. Just a line of thought. Anyway, what traits do you mean? What did he tell you?" Jessica asked him, putting what she'd been thinking about to the back of her mind for now.

"He said he observed one of them leap over twenty metres into the air, then fire at a series of ground based targets before he landed," Clayton told her. "Another got shot by live rounds, in the chest, and yet continued to fight on. Understandably, as soon as he could, my contact fled the area and forgot about what he'd seen. That is, of course, till he'd had a drink."

"And you don't think it was the drink talking?" she asked the Doctor, although she knew in her heart it wasn't. Again, there was something nagging at the back of her mind.

Clayton shook his head once. "No. He saw it."

"I won't repeat this, Doctor," Jessica assured him. She stood. Clayton looked up at her.

"Jess, what are we doing developing soldiers like that? I thought the Union's days of warmongering were over."

"I did too," she said, and left. On her way out, she spared the scorpion one last look as it was pushed into a heavy bag for freezing. Then she left the medical bay behind and headed for the bridge.

*

On her way up there, Jessica thought about the circumstances under which they'd been sent to investigate the Enigma. Grimshaw had been in such a hurry to get the
Defiant
shipshape and ready to go. They barely had time to catch their breath after a full year in the galactic wilds before they were sent straight back out on a secret mission.

She detoured to her quarters and called up the file on the
Enigma
. She accessed the data from the probe that had first detected its presence. Her suspicions proved correct. Command had had possession of the data for six months. Meaning, they'd known the
Enigma
was out there all that time. And yet, they'd made no effort to make a rendezvous with it.

Why?

And there was something else, too. It nagged at her. She couldn't remember exactly what it was, so she scanned through reports from the time the
Enigma
had been sighted. Her eyes widened as she happened across the very thing she'd been trying to remember. And then, on from that, aerial footage of a planet's surface.

She had a theory. But she needed a sounding board. Jessica called up to the bridge and requested Commander Greene come to her quarters immediately. Not long after, he was at her door.

"Emergency?" he asked, visibly a little out of breath from his sprint.

"Sorry, Del, I didn't mean to startle you. No, not an emergency. Something important, though. Sit down," she said. "Water? I'm having one."

"Good. Let's drink water together then," he said and sat. "So what is this?"

Jessica poured each of them a glass of water, handed Greene his, and went through the whole thing. She told him about Clayton's story
– and swore him to secrecy – then explained to him about the telemetry from the deep space probe Command had been holding onto for six months.

"So why the rush?" Greene asked.

"This is what I'm coming to. And it's only a theory, I just want to know if it's nuts or not," King said.

"Go on
. . ."

She licked her lips. "Just suppose the Union has been working on resurrecting old Namar technology from all that time ago. God knows they were ahead of the curve in most respects. What if they've found a way of reverse engineering it, but it's not perfect?"

"Yeah. I read there's lots of that old Namarian stuff about, and maybe they found relics from that time we've not heard about," Greene said.

"So, something happens. Such as three months ago. An experimental starship is stolen from Starbase 19 and simply disappears. They've yet to track it down."

"Okay."

"The report indicated an inside job. Union people stole that ship, Del. And I've a feeling just what sort of Union people did it, too," she said, nearing her point.

Greene was already there. "The soldiers Clayton told you about."

"Precisely."

Jessica led him to her work station and produced the aerial footage of a backwater planet that had long been dubbed Delta Colony. It showed a scorched area on the surface, and what had once been a barracks. "Apparently this is all that remains of a training facility."

"Training facility? Yeah right. Top secret source of operations more like," Greene said. "So you think
. . . what? The soldiers went AWOL and blew the place apart in the process?"

Jessica looked up at him, nodding slowly. "Exactly that. It seems to make sense, doesn't it? Especially given their sudden interest in the
Enigma
."

"When did this happen?"

"A little over three months ago, followed almost simultaneously by the theft of the ship. And then, lo and behold, along we come," she said. "The right ship, in the right place, at the right time."

Commander Greene walked to the porthole, folded his arms, and looked out.

"It doesn't quite add up though," he said. "Why wait so long? Why not reroute a ship straight there the minute they found it?"

"I don't understand that either," King said. "But whatever the reason, they must have one."

Greene looked at her from across the room. "You understand we can't talk about this to anyone, right? It has to stay between us. At least, for now."

"I know, Del. You're the only one I trust," Captain King said. She drained her water. She set the glass back on the table. "I believe we're being played here, somehow. And when we find out just how, I intend to be ready to take action."

"Amen," Greene said.

50.

At the exact same time Captain Jessica King was in her quarters discussing conspiracy theories with Commander Greene, Team Three discovered an airlock within the power facility at the rear of the
Enigma
. It took a bit of work for Lieutenant Jackson to open it. The airlock was not a fancy, touch-operated mechanism as they'd seen elsewhere on the ship. It had a traditional locking wheel, stiff with age. It took all of the man's strength to get it to budge.

However, budge it did.

"We'll let the man go first," Rayne said.

"Don't I count?" Belcher asked. He'd been standing next to Jackson as he struggled with the locking wheel, but the other man had refused any offer of help.

"Oh yes, you do," Rayne said. "But Jackson's the one with the biggest weapon. And the most experience in hand-to-hand combat. If there's something or somebody down there, they'll meet their match."

Belcher went next. "I'm pretty handy with a wrench myself, I'll have you know
. . ."

Selena Walker rolled her eyes and went in after Belcher, with Olivia Rayne stepping through the airlock last.

Sulphur yellow light filtered through from the ceiling. There were dim runner lights on the floor, but they did little to cut through the gloom in there. However, it was easy to see what this section of the ship was.

Rayne hit her comm. and got in touch with the
Defiant
straight away.

*

"Captain?" the bridge called through the comm. unit in her room. Jessica stopped Commander Greene on his way out the door.

"Hold on Del, let's hear this first," she said. "Bridge, this is the Captain. What is it?"

"We have Team Three on the line. It's urgent."

"Put her through," Jessica said. Greene stepped away from the door and it closed.

"Captain, it's Rayne," a familiar voice said over the speakers.

"Lieutenant, I hear you, go ahead," Jessica answered.

"We found something back here, something you'll want to see," Rayne said.

Greene frowned.

"Olivia, what have you found down there?" King asked her.

There was a brief silence, and then: "People. We've found people
. . ."