Into the Black: Odyssey One (8 page)

Eric was a technophile from way back, and didn’t have that particular problem, let alone understand those who did. So he just shrugged it off and turned his attention back to the situation at hand.

As he considered the doctor’s report, Eric Weston glanced between Rame and the transparency that opened up on the motionless figure laying in the isolation chamber, “All right Doctor, but I want to be informed as soon as she wakes up, and you’d better inform Dr. Palin here as well. He’ll be in charge of all communication attempts with her.”

The CMO looked over at the quiet man in the corner, noting his vacant expression with some puzzlement, but nodded his assent. “Yes Sir. I’ll be sure to call you both.”

Weston nodded as he left, hooking a right out the door and heading for his cabin.

After Dr. Palin had followed the Captain, Dr. Rame looked after them slowly shaking his head.
At least he didn’t try to have her interrogated immediately… or give her to those ghouls down in the bio-research lab
.

Dr. Rame shuddered. He was a medical doctor and he didn’t want to think what it would do to his career, if he’d had to lock the ship’s Captain out of the Med-Lab.

Even so he couldn’t decide whether he trusted that odd little man. And so, still shaking his head slightly, Rame turned back to his terminal and began to correlate the data that he had gathered while treating his impromptu patient for her injuries.

*****

“Well, well… What have we here?” The softly spoken words barely travelled to the speakers own ears, and were totally lost in the ruckus that had overtaken the adjacent Bridge and Data Management itself.

The slim blonde who had spoken, smiled softly to herself as she called up three different views of the same scan, reached out and ‘grabbed’ two of the floating displays and slid them together, superimposing them over the third. Her smile only widened as the blue, green, and red lines superimposed to form a single white one.

“I’d say that’s a match,” she smiled to herself, enjoying the sensation of having puzzled out a particularly aggravating riddle.

“Have something, Winger?”

Michelle Winger jumped. She’d missed the sound of the Commander coming up behind her, and she had to half twisted around. “Sir… I…”

“Relax Lieutenant,” Roberts said in a tone that made it an order as much as a suggestion.

Michelle swallowed and nodded, “Yes Sir.”

“Did you find something?”

She nodded, pointing to the floating holographic display in front of her, “I think that’s a wake, Sir.”

“A ‘wake’?” Roberts eyed the fluorescing colors that were superimposed over an image of interstellar space.

“Yes Sir,” Michelle turned away from him, her fingers reaching up to punch the air as she keyed in a series of commands via the floating interface. “These are particles of ionized gas… plasma, Sir. Now, they’ve been disrupted heavily in-system by solar winds, but I’ve had three of our long range scanners probing outside the heliopause for the last couple hours and…”

“Whoa…, couple hours? The Captain only issued the orders twenty minutes ago.” Roberts objected, “Winger, those scanners were needed to keep an eye on the local area! We could still have potentially hostile ships in the area.”

The Lieutenant swallowed, but replied quickly, “I realize that Sir, but we can cover a full global scan with two primary scanners and the secondary… I was worried that something might be coming in… or going out, Sir.”

Roberts frowned, shaking his head but finally nodded. “All right. We’ll let it go, for the moment. But I’ll have a few words with the Captain about this, Lieutenant.”

She nodded, hiding a grimace, “Yes Sir.”

“So…, tell me about this ‘wake’ of yours,” Roberts said seriously, leaning against the desk that Winger rarely used and gazing evenly at her.

*****

Captain Eric Weston was sitting at his desk, filing paperwork in triplicate on the Search and Rescue. It wasn’t quite as bad as it used to be, he supposed, since a single signature was digitally transferred to every document with a simple confirmation from his thumb print, but it was still paperwork, for all the paperless office he worked in.

So, even though he’d only just sat down at the job and was nowhere near being done, the call over the ship’s intercom was something to be thankful for.

“Weston here,” he said, leaning back and smiling.

“Sir, Commander Roberts.”

“Hell Commander. . . . What’s up?” Weston turned in his chair and tapped a command in the air.

He loved the holographic systems, especially since they let him actually keep a clean desk. That was something he’d never been able to do when he had his keyboard, mouse, monitor, and other requisite office materials to look after.

Now all it took to clean up was a wave of his hand, shutting down the Desk Office Suite and activating the catering service. In the time it took Roberts to start with his report, Weston was already reaching forward for a hot cup of coffee.

“Lieutenant Winger thinks she may have found the entry path of the fleet.” Roberts reported over the intercom.

Weston frowned, turning back to his desk. Another sweep of his hand and a poke in the appropriate place activated the floating screen again and he found himself looking at Roberts. “Oh? How certain?”

The big, black man shrugged, “as certain as anything gets right now, I suppose. It’s not human technology, and it’s sure as hell not one of our wakes, but it looks like someone dumped a lot of energy along a fairly tight trajectory out there.”

Weston nodded, “Have you extrapolated a point of origin?”

Roberts shook his head, “I’m afraid not, Sir… Nothing along that path for a thousand light years.”

“Hell,” Weston frowned, more than a little disappointed. It would have been nice to see an inhabited alien planet, even if they had to sneak a peek from way out past the system heliopause.

“Winger has an idea on that, Sir…,” Roberts said with a twist of his lip; as if it was something he didn’t really want to go on record as endorsing.

“Oh?” Weston smiled slightly, “do tell.”

“There’s one star system. . . . It’s within ten light years of the path and only twenty light years from here,” Roberts said, tilting his head as he pursed his lips, his expression one of scepticism. “It’s the closest system along the path.”

Weston nodded, considering the information. It could be a long shot, but it was still worth it, he quickly decided. “All right. When the shuttles are finished gathering samples, bring them back into the pen. In the meantime, have Waters plot us an escape trajectory that’ll coincide with this ‘wake’ of Winger’s. We’ll do some tight scans, and then transition out to the Lieutenant’s planet.”

“Yes Sir,” Roberts said, managing to sound elated and disappointed at the same time.

As the display went blank, revealing the synthetic cherry wood grain of his desk once more, Weston smiled to himself and shrugged. He could understand the Commander’s thoughts on the subject. This was turning into a very interesting maiden voyage. So interesting, in fact, that there seemed to be a strong case for going home right now and reporting it.

But Eric wasn’t interested in doing that quite yet. He wanted to see what else was out here and, more importantly, who else.

*****

Dr. Rame was tired. He had been working for several hours straight, his mind utterly refusing to let him take a break from the fascinating case study he had in front of him.

A human patient, who had only not been born on Earth, but who had apparently never been in the Sol system at all. Her body registered as perfectly human on every scan the doctor could imagine, even the brain waves appearing completely normal. Since she’d come on board, hundreds of theories had appeared in Rame’s mind, appeared and been discarded.

Parallel evolution was ridiculous, of course. At least by any modern theory of evolution he’d ever read. Evolution wasn’t a blueprint; it was a series of mistakes that occasionally turned out to be beneficial. And those were few and far between, the doctor knew. Evolutionary mutations were far more likely to result in the death of a species offshoot then anything that might benefit them in the long term, or even short term.

That left the insane, at least in Rame’s opinion.
Captured humans actually seemed the most likely
, he thought to himself as he waited for a test to run. The conspiracy theories surrounding the last century or two had continued to grow as man reached into the stars and even a scholar, as he considered himself, wasn’t immune to their attraction.

Of course, there was always the off chance that humanity was actually an offshoot of their culture, in some way. It was a long shot in Rame’s opinion, but possible. No one had ever actually found the so called missing link and far too many of the discoveries that supposedly supported it had been proven to be hoaxes.

He was still compiling the data on his new patient when the computer sounded an insistent beeping to notify him of his patient’s movement. Straightening from his task, Rame turned to the one way transparency that separates him and the ships ‘guest’. She was up and moving, examining the room with a certain level of growing agitation as she tested the door and examined the mirror that the doctor was standing behind.

“Rame calling Captain Weston,” he toggled the intercom switch on the wall, he knew that he should wear one of the induction units that the command staff used but he despised the feedback they often send through his jaw.

“This is Commander Roberts, Doctor. The Captain has left the bridge for a moment, how may I help you?”

“Contact the Captain and inform him that my patient has woken up.”

“Understood, Doctor.”

Dr. Rame hesitated a moment before reaching out and toggling the switch again, “Dr. Palin, this is Dr. Rame, She just woke up.”

“Gotcha, I’m heading down now.”

Gotcha
? Rame just kept shaking his head as he let the intercom flip off.

*****

Weston got the call from Roberts while in the gym, his daily workout time interrupted again by ship’s business. It took him several minutes to change back into his uniform and head for the Med Lab, so that by the time he arrived, a heated discussion had erupted between Rame and Palin.

“I don’t care what your qualifications are; she was just pulled out of a life pod that was floating in the middle nowhere. I’m not going to let you break out the ‘thumbscrews’ until I am certain she’ll recover!”

Weston never heard Palin’s retort, since both of them fell silent when they noted his entrance, “Hello again, Doctors. Can I assume that we have a slight difference of opinion?”

Rame turned to Weston, infuriated, “this so called ‘doctor’ wants to interrogate my patient, and I simply will not allow him to drive her into a relapse.”

“I’m hardly planning on breaking out the ‘thumbscrews’, Doctor.” Palin countered, insulted by the implication. “And it’s highly relevant and even vital that we get what information we can out of her as soon as possible. Isn’t that correct, Captain?”

Before he could reply, Weston was cut off by Rame.

“You’ll get nothing out of her if you shock her into a relapse! This patient requires delicate handling…”

Weston listened to the continued bickering of the two doctors as he looked in on the, very active ‘invalid’ that Rame was protecting. She was moving purposely from place to place in the room, examining every detail, her dark eyes flitting across every object in the room. As he watched, Weston noticed her eyes continually flickering in his direction, either examining her reflection or more likely looking for any hint of the faces she must suspect were behind the mirror.

He turned back to the dispute that was again threatening to flare through the medical lab, “Doctor Rame, how is her recovery coming?”

Rame turned to Weston, “She’s recovering remarkably quickly, but that worries me as much as anything, since I can’t figure out why. Anything unpredictable at this point is dangerous.”

“In other words she’s fine as far as you can tell, right Doc?” Weston asked pointedly.

Rame stammered over his words, “Well yes, but that’s the point, Captain! I can’t be sure about my readings; we DID just pick her up over forty five light years from Earth Sir.”

Weston looked at the Doctor for a long moment; finally he spoke again, “all right Doctor, point taken. What if you joined Dr. Palin in the room? You have full authority to pull the plug at any time you feel her health is threatened.”

Palin’s face darkened and he opened his mouth to object, but immediately shut it again at a glance from Weston. Rame on the other hand appeared mollified and slowly mulled the offer over.

“All right, but I’ll hold you to that Captain.”

“Good. Both of you get into class five environmental suits and pay our guest a visit,” Eric ordered crisply.

“Class Five???” Both of them immediately objected.

“Captain, this type of situation only calls for a class two suit.” Rame looked between the isolation room and Captain Weston in obvious confusion.

“I realize that Doctor, but class five units incorporate mirrored visors and full body coverage. And I don’t think I want our guest seeing us just yet.”

“Captain! I object to putting that type of stress onto this woman so soon. It’s despicable,” Rame looked at the Captain in indignation.

“I’m sorry, Doctor. But the fact that we found a human being floating in a life pod forty-eight light-years from home has been preying on my mind, and I don’t want to give up too much information too soon.” Weston was adamant.

And so, in spite his objections, the Doctor slowly began to fit himself into the one piece garment. He sealed its seams until he looked like he was wearing a lightweight spacesuit with an inordinately large helmet. As Dr. Palin mimicked his actions, Rame’s large bulbous mass turned slightly to take in the mirror image that had engulfed Dr. Palin, and a muffled voice sounded from the suit.

“All right Captain, we’re both prepped, will you be observing or should we call you when we’re done?”