Into the Black: Odyssey One (5 page)

Inside researchers were rushing from lab to lab and console to console, as they struggled to shake off the transitional effects and complete their work in the shortest time possible. The rear module soon entered a state of barely controlled chaos as the military crew stepped back and watched the civilian scientists, half in awe and half in disgust.

Weston oversaw the initial setup of schedules and sensor times, but soon decided to leave it to his officers and retired to allow himself to recover from the shock he had not allowed his system to work out. In his quarters, Weston felt his control slip away and his hands begin shaking slightly as he collapsed on the bed, finally permitting himself to simply let go. Sleep didn’t come easily but it came.

*****

Chief Corrin growled as she yanked a crewman up by the scruff of his neck, twisting him away from her so he didn’t puke on her polished boots.

“Get to the Med lab!” she growled, shoving him along in front of her.

She stayed with him just long enough to flag down another crewman who looked to be in moderately better shape. “Med lab?”

He nodded.

“Here,” she shoved the still retching crewman into his arms. “Take him.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Corrin watched them stumble down the hall, and steeled her stomach once again; heading into Marine Country to see what kind of mess the groundhogs had done to her bulkheads.

The sound of yelling up ahead caused her to quicken her pace, but the tone made her stop before she came into sight. She curiously glanced around the corner into one of the soldier’s lounges and her eyes widened at what she saw.

“Oh YEAH!” The Lieutenant that had asked her for directions earlier was boosting his hands in the air and yelling at the top of his lungs.

“I want to go again!!” He grinned as half the men around him laughed openly, and the other half glared at him with sickly, green faces.

Corrin shook her head and backed out of there.

They couldn’t give us Marines… Noooo… They had to recruit a bunch of Rambo wannabes. Marines are bad enough, but at least I KNOW Marines.

*****

“Captain to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!”

Weston was well clear of the bed and halfway to the door before his senses focused enough to realize that running around the ship in his underwear probably wouldn’t do much for morale. Well…, his morale anyway. So he took his time and in less than five minutes he strode onto the bridge, fastening the last couple buttons on his collar and looking around for the emergency.

“Captain, over here,” Commander Roberts was looking at a display on one of the terminals linked to the research labs below.

“Commander, I hardly think that a research breakthrough necessitated getting me out of bed. It could have waited until morning.”

“No sir, at least not according to the techs in the tachyon lab.”

Weston’s eyes narrowed, trouble with the tachyon reactors would be bad news, the transition drive was all that kept them from having to limp home at slightly under two thirds light speed. “Is it trouble with the reactors?”

“No Sir. Our tachyon-based sensing arrays started picking up a tachyon signal about an hour ago, Sir. It took us this long to figure out, even part of it.”

“Figure out? We pick up stray signals all the time; tachyons are generated by at least a dozen special events.” Weston wasn’t sure, but he felt like his mind hadn’t full woken up.

“This isn’t a stray, Captain. It’s modulated.”

Weston was silent for a moment. Modulated tachyon signals were considered impossible back home. It was a classic chicken and egg scenario…, you couldn’t modulate a superlight signal without a superlight computer, but of course without modulated superlight signals, no one could build a computer that fast. The best anyone had really come up with was a complicated form of Morse code that sufficed for most in-system communications, but required massive directional transmitters.

Transmitters that, unfortunately, didn’t fit on the Odyssey. The best a ship her size could manage was an infinitesimal ‘Ping’ that allowed her to perform short and long range scans, but didn’t allow for any form of communication unless she managed to perfectly hit the intended receiver with the minute burst.

From within a star system, that was just barely possible.

At anything greater, they had a better chance of sailing off the edge of the universe.

More’s the pity,
Eric snorted softly as he frowned at the readout. “How the hell did we just happen to walk into this?”

Roberts swallowed, “It appears to be omnidirectional, Sir.”

“What?”

Roberts just shrugged.

Weston blinked in shock. That was unbelievable. An omnidirectional signal from a Tachyon source would require immense power reserves, entire levels of magnitude above and beyond what the Odyssey could possibly
hope
to pump out. And the Odyssey had one of the most advanced reactors in existence, “my God.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Weston shook his head to clear it, trying to shake off the awe. Finally he made a short laughing noise. “I guess science scores another foul ball, someone must have done the impossible again. Where’s it from? Mars? Earth? One of the outposts?”

“No, Sir. It’s from a White Giant about twenty eight light years from here.” Roberts look Weston straight in the eye as he replied.

For the third time in as many minutes, Weston was floored, “I don’t suppose anybody we know is out there?”

Roberts just shook his head as Eric tried to wrap his mind around the situation. “No, Sir. This is as close to absolute proof as you get. It’s definitely not from Earth, Sir.”

Weston quickly recovered from the surprise, “Ok, it’s alien. Any idea what it says?”

“Not exactly, Sir. But decryption thinks it’s an SOS. They seem fairly confident.”

“Yeah, I remember how confident they were thirteen years ago when they swore that the Block was calling for a retreat. I lost twelve planes before we managed to get our ass out of the middle of the Block’s reinforcements,” Weston muttered darkly.

Still, his dry reply was belied by the look of sudden interest that flared across his face. History was afoot here, and it seemed that the Odyssey was about to plunge right through the center of it. He paused for a moment, eyes staring at the screens without seeing them, considering his options.

“How long until we’re clear of Alpha Centauri?” Eric asked finally, straightening.

“We’ve had to correct to avoid passing though the gravity tides of Beta Centauri, but still we’ll be clear in about an hour.”

“Good. I’m going back to talk with some of the lab techs. Especially those decryption boys…,” Eric smiled nastily. “We’ll see how certain they really are. Inform me when we’re cleared for transition. In the meantime, have a course plotted to intercept the signal’s source.”

“Yes, Sir.”

*****

Eric had taken the first available tube back to the rear habitat, following the smoothly arcing corridors until they led him to the Com-Lab. When the doors cycled open Weston was assaulted by noise coming from at least half dozen stations, as they analysed the signal, the combined blaring almost deafening.

“IS THAT REALLY NECESSARY!?” Weston raised his voice as high as he could, trying to communicate past the ambient sounds, to a man in a white lab coat.

The man glanced up at him, almost ignoring him until a glimmer of recognition flickered across his face and his hand reached out and slapped a bank of switches, mercifully silencing the room. Weston glanced around a realized with a start that only the tech he had talked to was actually listening to the sounds, the rest were wincing beneath heavy ear guards.

Wish I’d known to bring a pair, my ears are going to ring for hours,
and Weston winced and rubbed the sides of his head.

“I’m terribly sorry, Captain. I was just seeing if I could decipher the meaning,” The man said apologetically, then almost immediately seemed to forget he was there.

“Ahem,” Weston cleared his throat, startling the man, as he shook his head slightly in an attempt to clear the ringing, “How on earth could you possibly decipher anything from that mess?”

“Mess? Hardly. So far I’ve been able to tell at least three words apart, although I can only be sure of one… ‘escouros’, it seems to mean ‘help’ or perhaps ‘rescue’.”

Weston did a double take and stared at the tech, “I don’t take well to jokes at times like this Mr…”

The man looked startled for a moment then grabbed Weston’s hand and shook it energetically, “I’m so sorry, Captain! I’m Dr. Palin; I see you haven’t had a chance to read my file yet, so I’ll apologize for my apparent levity. I’m the Odyssey’s ‘Token’ linguist,” the man grinned wryly at the word ‘token’. “My previous supervisor recommended me for the position, probably to get rid of me, I suppose, but I really am the best at what I do, Captain.”

Weston was taken aback by the man’s startlingly quick change of tack, his hand limply following Palin’s, “Uh, alright. So you’re the one who thinks it’s a distress call?”

“No. I
know
it’s a distress call. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any specifics in the signal,” Palin suddenly frowned, looking downright depressed at his lack of hard facts.

Weston spent the next few minutes talking with Dr. Palin, occasionally interrupted by one or another of the technicians in the lab, as they attempted to disassociate themselves from Palin, who was clearly considered a heretic.

Eric ignored them as they didn’t have any thoughts of their own to add to the discussion. He didn’t have much patience for people who were only willing to toe the company line. While they were responsible for what they ‘knew’, Eric wanted to hear what people
thought
as well. Whether he was right or not, Palin was at least willing to step up to the plate, as it were.

“I’m going to take the Odyssey to investigate. If you’re right, it’s our duty to respond…,” Weston decided, then paused a moment, “and besides, even if you’re wrong it’s something we really
have
to see for ourselves. Oh, and Doc? I think it would be best if you used the headphones for a while, give the others a break.”

“Very well, Captain. I suppose I could restrict myself,” Palin’s voice sounded disappointed, “for a little while, at least.”

Weston retreated hastily from the lab, tapping the signal key to activate the induction microphone on his jaw, “Commander Roberts.”

Roberts came back quickly, “Yes, Sir?”

“I’m heading for my office for a while, contact me when we clear the gravity well.”

“Yes, Sir.”

*****

Weston took the tube back to the forward habitat and quickly navigated through the rolling corridors to his office. Once inside, he quickly called up Doctor Palin’s file on his local terminal, determined to find out what kind of man he was going to trust his ships future to.

This is strange;
to say that Palin’s file was nondescript was understatement. There were no particularly impressive achievements, nor were there any notes of discipline problems, something which drew his attention rather quickly after his first meeting with the man.
This can’t be his record. A clerical error?
Weston began sweeping through dossiers that were stored in the computers fractal core, sweeping through terabytes of information as he had the computer cross reference the good doctors past.

Bingo.
The computer flashed a ‘Restricted Information’ block as he tried to call up one of the buried files that the computer had matched with Palin. A few moments later and his override code gave him access to the file he wanted.

Eric leaned back and skimmed through the file, quickly skipping the basic biographical information to get to the meat of the situation.

Jesus Christ, what on Earth is this?
Weston scanned through the document, comparing the embedded picture quickly against his memory;
yes this is Palin, a lot younger maybe but definitely him.
The file was an old CIA document describing Doctor Edward Palin’s contribution to their black ops projects in the early years after the turn of the millennium. Hundreds of experiments and documented evidence revolving around Palin’s reported ‘abilities’.

Dr. Palin was classified as a Linguistic Telepath.
Whatever the hell that is,
Weston’s mood had grown somewhat darker,
and you’d think that whoever assigned him would have thought to inform me about his alleged abilities.
Still Weston had to admit that the file was impressive; it documented cases of Palin cracking encrypted algorithms faster than an array of networked supercomputers, as well as his uncanny ability to learn spoken languages literally overnight if he was exposed to other people who were fluent in the language. Weston was still delving into Palin’s rather extensive record, when Robert’s voice came over the ships com.

“Captain, were about to clear the tidal well.”

“On my way, Commander. Send an announcement through the ship; tell them to be ready for another hop through transitional space.”

“Yes Sir,” Weston could hear the distaste in the commander’s voice, even over the comlink.

One more into the abyss,
Eric smiled to himself, shoving aside his misgivings and personal dislike of the Transition drive. He couldn’t afford to show the crew that their Captain didn’t trust the very thing that they were depending on.

*****

“All right!” the Former Marine Force Recon Sargent grinned, looking around. “I’ve got thirty bucks that says I can make the all-time standing long-jump record, here and now and NOT toss my cookies, when I land!”

“You’re on!” Bermont grinned, slapping a pair of bills down on the table. “I saw your face after the last one, Rogers…, and you just ate, so I
know
you’re gonna spatter the deck.”

Loud cries echoed around the room as others got in on the wager, some betting with the Marine, some with the JTF2 Lieutenant. At the far end, Chief Corrin shook her head and tried to pretend that the rank and file weren’t betting on who was going to vomit all over her decks.