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10

The unknown was close enough now for standard visual observation. It was a simple cylinder, but immensely long at six kilometers. If there were human colonists on board, there were a lot of them. The fact that it was constructed using a human measuring standard, however, almost certainly indicated a human origin. That was some small comfort, at least. The question at hand, though, was who had built it, and for what intent.

The Ark ship (as Clement was now convinced that it was, whether he was willing to share that with the crew or not) had a general silver-gray color with black caps at either end, with no discernable exterior features to distinguish it. It looked more like a great torpedo or missile than a colonization ship. Ark ships usually ran with large solar panels to power the interior environment for the passengers. Usually. It was possible this particular ship carried its crew in a deep sleep, however, powered by a nuclear fusion reactor, thus not requiring the typical level of active environmental systems.

“We’ll be able to match her course and speed exactly, sir, if you give me another few minutes,” said Mika Ori at the helm.

“Do it,” replied Clement, then looked around the room before hitting the ship-wide com. “Attention, crew of the Beauregard,” he said. “In a few minutes, we’ll be in intercept position of the unknown. At that time, I will be taking over an expeditionary team in our only shuttle, leaving Commander Yan at the con. For this mission I will be needing a team of specialists to do an evaluation of whatever that ship is and what’s on it. Therefore, I have selected the following crew to join me: Middie Daniel, Captain Wilcock, Middie Telco, and Medical Technician Pomeroy. Engineer Nobli will stay aboard with Commander Yan on the Beauregard to monitor our progress via visual com link. The rest of you are to be at your stations on high alert. We have to be ready to exit this area at high speed if necessary. So man your stations, do your jobs. I trust you. Clement out,” he said as he shut down the com. Yan approached him then.

“Is it wise to go yourself?” she said.

“Always,” replied Clement. “I never pass off what should be my responsibility. And I know you think you should lead the mission, but I want you here in case there’s trouble.”

She looked chagrined. “But why take Wilcock, and the two middies?”

Clement smiled. “Can you think of anyone on this ship more expendable than Wilcock? And Daniel hasn’t had much to do. Telco and Pomeroy I trust with a cobra rifle. So that’s that,” he said.

Yan nodded, but she wasn’t happy. “Understood, sir.”

Twenty minutes later, after confirmation from Mika Ori of their match to the unknown for course and speed, Clement was in the prep room with his team pulling on an EVA suit. Middie Telco came through, already suited but without his helmet on yet, and delivered weapons to each of the shuttle crew—standard cobra pistols for the suit side holsters and the key to one of the cobra rifles, preloaded—that were already on the shuttle. Clement watched with disdain as Wilcock attempted to holster his pistol. After the third try Wilcock’s finger accidently set off the safety and Clement rushed over and grabbed him hard by the wrist to stop him from burning off his leg.

“Didn’t you get any goddamn basic training?” said Clement as he pulled the pistol from Wilcock’s hand, reset the safety, and then put it in the holster himself.

“I did, sir,” Wilcock protested. “I know how to use a weapon.”

Clement just stared at him, then donned his helmet and sealed up his EVA suit.

“Everybody on board. When we get over there I want everyone to use their rifle as the main weapon of defense with the pistol as a secondary,” he said.

“Are we expecting trouble, sir?” said the annoying Wilcock.

“Not necessarily, Captain, but we always prepare for it. Now all aboard.”

With that the techs that had helped them prep vacated the cargo hold and the shuttle was positioned for launch. Once the room was cleared and the environment evacuated, Clement took to the pilot’s seat with Pomeroy, who had a shuttle pilot’s accreditation, next to him. The others gathered in the back and strapped in. Clement signaled up to Yan for launch clearance, which was given. The cargo bay doors opened and Clement fired up the engine, hitting the gas hard as everyone slid back into their passenger seats. He leaned over to Pomeroy and joked, “Just making sure they’re awake back there.” She smiled.

The crossing was uneventful and Clement swung the shuttle into a close track to the unknown, heading down her length slowly. Clement tested his com link.

“Nobli, Yan, what do you make of that hull?” he asked. There was a pause, then Nobli came on the line.

“I’d say you’re looking at reinforced regolith with a shiny coat of sealant on it, sir. The old Ark ships were designed this way, to keep things like meteors and other objects from destroying the ship in flight.”

“What’s regolith?” asked Pomeroy.

“It’s solar system material from moons and asteroids, rocks and dirt, some metals. In advanced Ark design, they used a thick layer of it over an internal hull to protect the ships as they moved through the interstellar void. Common practice back in the Exodus days. Not surprised to see it here,” said Nobli. At that Clement switched to the shuttle’s com line to his crew.

“We’re looking for anything that resembles a docking bay or external air lock,” said Clement over the com. “Don’t be afraid to go to the portside windows and have a look out.” It was Middie Daniel who called in what looked to be an external air lock one third of the way down the length of the cylinder.

“Good eyes, Daniel,” said Clement over the com.

“Thank you, sir,” replied the middie, happy to be contributing.

“It sure doesn’t look like a match for our docking mechanism,” observed Pomeroy. Clement eyed the hatch. It was round. The shuttle’s was rectangular, like the shape of a doorway, big enough for a human to pass through. Hopefully, the round shape of the Ark’s door wasn’t an indication of the crew’s shape. That could indicate a nonhuman design.

“What do we do?” asked Pomeroy. Clement thought about that as he pulled the shuttle in close, matching course and speed with the unknown and the hatch.

“Middie Telco,” Clement called over the com.

“Aye, sir,” replied the eager young man.

“Vent the air lock to vacuum and prepare a tether, and four C-7 charges. We’ll need to blow that hatch.”

“Yes, sir!”

“And you’ll be the one to set the charges,” said Clement as he came down from the pilot’s nest to the shuttle cabin.

“Aye, sir,” Telco said, trying to stay calm, and quickly went about his business. Daniel helped him get tethered up and Wilcock handed him the four charges. Clement wanted someone else to handle the explosives, anyone, but he just bit his lip as Wilcock managed to get the job done correctly without destroying the shuttle.

“Could blowing the hatch be seen as an attack by us on them?” came Yan’s voice over the com. Clement paused for a moment before responding.

“That is a consideration, Commander. But . . . looking down the full length of this ship I don’t see any other such opening, so unless you’re suggesting we knock on the door . . . ”

“Understood, Captain,” replied Yan, then cleared the channel.

A few seconds later and Telco entered the air lock, shutting the door behind him as he vented the chamber to space. Clement and the others watched as he used maneuvering jet bursts to cross the threshold of open space to the unknown’s hatch, trailing the tether all the way. Telco set the charges expertly at twelve, three, six, and nine o’clock, then quickly jetted back to the shuttle. Once he was back inside and the air lock was sealed, Clement turned to Lieutenant Pomeroy.

“Take the controls and give us some distance, at least five hundred meters,” he said. Pomeroy did as instructed. Then Clement turned to Telco. “Um, Telco, I almost forgot, did it look like there was any way in?”

“You know I was so busy setting the charges . . . ”

“So, nobody looked for an air lock control?” asked Wilcock.

“Well, I guess our arrival will be a surprise, then,” quipped Clement.

“Six hundred fifty meters, sir,” called Pomeroy from her station. Clement acknowledged.

“Everyone lock down their EVA suits.” There was a round of affirmatives.

“Vent the cabin pressure please, Pomeroy,” ordered the Captain. They waited as the small shuttle quickly drained of environment. Then Clement turned to Telco.

“You have the controls, Middie,” said Clement, giving the excited young man a chance to shine by handing him a remote detonator. “Detonate when ready.”

Telco calmly counted down from five, then lit up the explosives. After a flurry of cloudy gas escaping from the unknown, the area quickly cleared to reveal a fairly round gash in its side. Pomeroy maneuvered the shuttle in close again, then they loaded up their cobra rifles and proceeded over in an orderly manner, Telco taking the lead and acting as an anchor while the others made the tethered crossing.

They were in what appeared to be a long, twisting drain shaft of some kind which required them to crouch as they went. Telco took the lead, cobra rifle in hand, followed by Pomeroy, Clement, Daniel, and Wilcock, the least valuable member of the crew as Clement saw it, taking up the rear.

“What do you make of this shaft, Pomeroy?” asked Clement of the medic.

“Well, I’m no expert, but this appears to be a passageway designed to expel a specific cargo, something that fits the spherical shape of this tube. There are rails to speed up the process.”

“Any guesses on what that cargo might be?”

“Not at the moment, sir.”

They proceeded about thirty meters more until the passageway turned and came out at what appeared to be a maintenance room. The room had a doorway, with a locking mechanism. The door itself looked human-sized, if that meant anything. Clement fired up the com back to Nobli and Yan aboard the Beauregard.

“Hassan, can you see this?” said Clement. “We’re in some kind of maintenance room. There’s no gravity but there is a door lock.”

“Can I see the door mechanism?” asked Nobli through the now scratchy com line. Clement moved up to the door and put his body camera close to a lit panel. There were red, amber, and green buttons on the left of the panel and a series of characters on the right, none of which Clement could read. The red light was lit.

“What do you make of it?” said Clement.

“Well, some of the characters look like Chinese,” said Nobli. “But I can’t read them.”

“It’s not Chinese,” said Yan through the com. “It’s Imperial Korean.”

“And how do you know that?” asked Clement.

“I studied the history of the old Korean Empire on Earth, mid-twenty-first century. They took over almost everything in the Asia-Pacific region at that time. That looks like a more advanced form than I studied, probably mixed in with some traditional Chinese characters,” said Yan.

“Can you read it?” asked Clement.

“I’ll try . . . ” They all waited impatiently as Yan stayed silent for at least thirty seconds. Finally, she said: “I think the red light is a warning indicator that the room is in vacuum. It’s telling you . . . it’s telling you that if you open the door decompression could occur. There’s also another indicator . . . Do you see that blue bar just below the main console?”

“On the side here?”

“Yes, that’s it. Press that bar.”

Clement ordered everyone to get close to him before he pressed it, then hit the button on Yan’s advice. A large bulkhead-type door slid down fast behind them, cutting off their exit through the tube as the room started normalizing atmosphere. The colors on the door panel lit up from red to amber to green.

“Pomeroy?”

“Atmosphere is breathable, sir. Outside temp is just over 14 C, sir. Not tropical but breathable,” she said.

“Everyone keep their helmets on. We’re not through this yet,” warned Clement to his party. “Yan, in your opinion is it safe to go through this door?”

“Safe? That’s relative, sir. You’re there. You came for a reason, and that reason is to discover what’s beyond that door, correct?”

“Correct. Um, how do you suggest we proceed?”

Yan laughed. “You might try pressing the green button,” she said. Clement looked to Pomeroy, who nodded, then pressed the button.

The door opened to a dark and misty chamber, almost like a fog, and dimly lit. It was packed floor to ceiling with round capsules that were roughly man-sized, hanging from the ceiling. The capsules went on in multiple rows in both directions from where they stood, disappearing into the fog in the distance.

“So, this is eerie,” cracked Pomeroy. Clement ignored her.

“Boots,” said Clement, ordering everyone to activate their magnetic boots. There were bits of paper floating around the room, indicating a low- or zero-g environment. The team started slowly walking, Clement ordering them in farther. As they passed the individual capsules there were no windows discernible, no way to look in, and nothing moved on them except the occasional blinking monitor light.

“Opinions?” he asked as they looked around the room, taking their first exploratory steps.

“It’s something you might expect on an Ark ship with the crew in a deep freeze. There must be hundreds of these things,” said Pomeroy. “Maybe more.”

“Colonists, then?”

“Perhaps,” came Nobli’s voice over the com. “How big is that room?”

“Big enough we can’t see the walls,” said Clement. “Let’s reconnoiter. Pomeroy with me. The rest of you take the far side of the room,” he said, pointing to his right from the door. “And look for a way out of this room.” There was a round of quiet “Aye, sir’s” to that.

As they proceeded there were more and more rows of the capsules, and Clement was not prepared to crack one open and find out what was inside. He called to Telco with the other group. “Status?” he asked.

“No change, sir. Just lots and lots of these capsules. I’d say there are definitely people inside, human or otherwise, in stasis, sir,” replied Telco.

“Agreed, Telco. Now if we just knew who they were.” Clement checked his arm monitor. He set it for a counting procedure, and scanned up and down the rows with an amber light pulse. After a few seconds it came back with an estimate. “Monitor guesses there are more than four thousand of these capsules in here,” he said.

“Brigade strength,” piped in Daniel. That was smart.

“I wish you hadn’t said that, Middie,” said Clement. “All right, everyone proceed forward until we locate the far wall. Let’s find a way out of here.” As they walked slowly through the environmental mist Clement brought Yan in for a consultation over the private com.

“If each of these capsules has a single soldier in it . . . ” He trailed off.

“Why are you assuming they’re soldiers and not colonists?” replied Yan.

“Nothing about this ship indicates colonization, Yan. It seems strictly military in function, to me anyway.”

“Assuming that’s true, I’d say that those capsules are designed for use on a habitable world. That tunnel you blew your way into was probably for deploying the capsules to the surface.”

“From space?” Clement said, a bit incredulous.

“They probably have thrusters for braking and landing on a lower-gravity world like Alphus. Remember, it’s only about 0.66 g of Earth gravity.”

“Okay . . . ”

Yan continued. “The capsules likely contain everything they’d need, weapons, rations, equipment and the like. Just ready to be deployed.”

“And the . . . passengers?”

“Likely not revived until the capsule was deposited on the target world.”

This made Clement uncomfortable. “So you’re leaning toward this being a military mission as well?”

Yan hesitated. “You’ve got to see the rest of the ship first before I could draw that conclusion.”

“Thank you, Yan,” he said, then cut the line. Now he was worried.


Middie Daniel found the outer door, complete with the same key that they had found in the maintenance room. Clement called over to Yan to get a reading of the commands, but it was just general information, no instructions. There was a key panel, though with Arabic numerals on it, the problem being that they didn’t have the key code, or even a guess as to how to figure it out.

“Can’t we just blast it?” said Telco.

“I see subtlety isn’t your strong point, Middie. Other, more helpful suggestions?” Clement asked the expeditionary team.

“Your cobra pistol has an electromagnetic-pulse setting,” said Nobli over the com from the Beauregard almost immediately.

“A what?” replied Clement.

“A small EM-pulse generator. It’s a defensive setting, for when you might want to disable local enemy mobile communications and the like,” replied Nobli.

“I had no idea,” said Clement. Soon all five of the expeditionary team were playing with their cobra pistols to find the setting. Clement looked up and decided he had to put a stop to this fiddling or risk an accident. “Enough,” he said, reaching out and putting his hand over Telco’s pistol. They all stopped. “Someone volunteer.”

“I’ll do it,” said Daniel, beating Telco to the punch to volunteer for once. Clement nodded.

“Gotta spread the love around, I guess. All right, Daniel, you get the assignment. Everyone else holster their pistols.” Clement watched as they all did as ordered except Wilcock, who fumbled to get his pistol holstered again. Once that process was over without incident, Clement took Daniel’s cobra pistol and, following Nobli’s instructions, set the pistol for a short range EM pulse before handing it back to the middie.

“How far back do we have to be for this?” Clement asked Nobli.

“Three meters should do it. But Mr. Daniel should have the anti-pulse mode on his suit activated.”

Clement let out an exasperated sigh. “And how do we do that?”

Nobli explained the process and Clement ordered everyone in the crew to do the same, then take their distance from Daniel. Once they were set, Clement gave the middie an order to proceed at his discretion.

Daniel stood half a meter from the door and pointed the pistol at the door lock, then counted down from five as Telco had done, then fired the pistol. There was a flash of blinding white light, and after his eyes cleared Clement could see the door mechanism had gone dark, as well as several monitor panels on the near wall. The rest of the room hummed on quietly, dim lights glowing in the near dark mist.

They all rushed up to the doorway to see the results of Daniel’s handiwork. The locking mechanism was dead, and the door was slightly ajar. “It must have activated the door-opening sequence just before the circuits burned out,” said Clement. Then he turned to his young crew members. “Well don’t just stand there, Middies, get the damn thing open.” He and Wilcock and Pomeroy stepped back while the two middies struggled with the door for a few minutes. At some point they must have hit a release mechanism as the door eventually slid open quickly.

Clement led his expeditionary team, cobra rifles drawn, into the dark. The hallway they were in was even dimmer than the capsule chamber, but minus the mist. That was a plus. They used their EVA suit lights to scan as they walked. The hallway was long and empty, with curved walls, and there were entry doors every few dozen meters on both the top and bottom of the hallway with no deference to gravity, or “up” and “down.” Like being inside a can of peas.

“Split up again,” ordered Clement. “Wilcock, you take the two middies that way”—he pointed back down the hallway they had just come up—“Pomeroy and I will go upstream. Report whatever you find.” Then he looked down at his watch. “Rendezvous back here in thirty minutes. We don’t want to overstay our welcome,” he said.

Wilcock checked his watch and then led the two middies away while he and Pomeroy made their way to the nearest doorway, across the hall and up the wall from the capsule chamber. Clement called in a request to Nobli for a better way to enter and exit each room, which, surprisingly, Nobli provided. It turned out a negative EM pulse would clear the door codes without damaging the key. Pomeroy tried it on the near door, reset the key code randomly, and the door slid open. Before Clement let her go in he sent the procedure to Wilcock via the com for the second group to use. There was, however, increasing static interference in both their internal and external communications. That worried Clement.

He and Pomeroy stepped inside the chamber and found it nearly identical with the one they had entered originally. It was full of more capsules, and not much else. The same was repeated twice more before they entered the third chamber down from their original entry door.

The door opened into complete darkness. Even with both of their helmet lights on, the room had a deep, dark feeling and a coldness to it. Frankly, to Clement, it was downright creepy.

“I found a console,” said Pomeroy. Clement went to her and looked at the panel, dimly lit from her suit light. “These look like environmental controls, and this should be power,” she said, pointing to a glowing blue LED icon with an unreadable symbol on it. “Do we light it up?” she asked Clement.

“Hold on,” he said, then tried to raise Wilcock and the middies. He couldn’t connect with them. “Must be the walls in here,” he said.

“They could be reinforced against unauthorized communications,” posited Pomeroy.

“One question then, why would you do that if this were a civilian colony ship?” Pomeroy shrugged.

“There may be only one way to find that out,” she said.

Clement looked at the panel with the power icon on it, and nodded.

Pomeroy pressed the button.

The panel started to light up slowly, activating systems in a seemingly pre-planned order. Eventually overhead lights came on from a single glowing light panel bolted to the ceiling.

A chamber below them started to light up. Clearly they were in a control room, high above what lay in the massive central chamber below. They went to the window and looked down.

There was a large collection of ships in what looked like an aircraft carrier bay. Some seemed sized for a small number of occupants, others were significantly larger.

“Attack ships,” said Pomeroy, “Three-man light attack clippers, I’d bet.”

“Dozens of them,” replied Clement. “And those larger ships could be destroyers with ten to twenty in the crew.” All of them were starting to receive power through the activation system they had just lit up.

Clement grabbed Pomeroy by the arm and quickly dragged her out of the room, not bothering to shut the door behind them. They “ran” as best they could in low gravity with their grav boots on, heading back the way they had come. Clement called to Wilcock on his com.

“Wilcock! Get back to the maintenance room. We’re getting out of here,” he said, a bit more frantically than he would have liked.

“Already on our way, sir,” Wilcock replied through heavy static. “We found tons of military equipment in several chambers, and more capsules.”

Clement stopped in his tracks. “What kind of equipment?”

“Armored vehicles. Mortars. Fixed gun emplacements and the like. Enough for a full division, or more.”

“Shit!” said Clement, and started moving again. “Get to the maintenance room as fast as you can!”

“Aye, sir.”

He and Pomeroy continued their “run” as best they could. Within a minute’s time, Wilcock and the two middies were straight ahead of them at about two hundred meters, already at the door to the capsule chamber and maintenance room when the first shot was fired from behind Clement’s shoulder. A bright red energy blast hit Middie Daniel in the gut and he fell. Clement whipped around and pulled his cobra rifle, quickly returning fire with kinetic tracer rounds.

“Unlock your boots! Go zero-g! Now!” he ordered.

Pomeroy did as ordered, pushing off the hallway wall and propelling herself toward Wilcock and the two middies. Telco was pulling Daniel inside the capsule chamber. Clement turned back and saw six soldiers in full EVA gear slowly coming at him, rifles drawn, in battle crouches. He unlocked his boots and then fired a volley of suppressing kinetic rounds at the soldiers, who scattered. The resultant force from his shots propelled Clement down the hallway at a fast clip. It was one way to hasten his departure, but a dangerous one. He kept shooting, and the soldiers kept scrambling, but he was going way too fast now . . .

The big arms of Middie Telco wrapped around him and both men hit the wall and then skidded down the hallway about ten meters before Telco’s boot grips stopped them. Clement switched his magnetic boot controls back on and they both made for the capsule room door with Pomeroy and Wilcock supplying the suppressing fire for their retreat. Once at the door Telco pushed Clement through the threshold. On the ground was Middie Daniel’s body, a hole burned clean through his abdomen.

“He’s dead, sir,” said Telco.

“He is, Middie. Let’s get out of here,” he ordered his remaining crew into full retreat, and they went back through the capsule chamber to the maintenance room, locking the door behind them. Telco had carried Middie Daniel’s body over his shoulder. Clement opened the maintenance room door using the blue button again, then fired his cobra pistol in plasma mode to melt the control panel in place. He ordered his crew out of the deployment tube and they quickly tethered their way back to the shuttle. The crossing took longer than Clement wanted, Telco being slowed by carrying Daniel’s body, and he worried about enemy soldiers shooting at them the whole time. Finally, they got back home and got the shuttle underway, moving away from the Ark ship and toward the Beauregard as fast as Clement could make the shuttle go.

Once they were clear and moving at an acceptable rate of speed, Clement turned the controls over to Pomeroy and went back to check on his crew. Daniel’s body was laid out on the shuttle floor. Telco looked down on his friend.

“Those were soldiers, sir. And that ship. I didn’t see anything that wasn’t military grade,” Telco said.

“We also saw a dedication plaque,” said Wilcock. “If I read it right, the ship is called the Li Shimen, after a famous general of some kind.”

Clement looked to Telco. “Middie Telco, when we get back aboard the Beauregard, get our missile tubes loaded with the nukes. We may need them all if we’re going to escape this situation. And don’t delay, you get me, Middie?” Clement turned to Wilcock. “You’re with him.”

“Understood,” said Wilcock. “The warheads are already armed, sir.”

“What about Daniel, sir?” Telco asked, looking at his dead friend’s body. Clement shook his head.

“Leave it, son. There’s no time.”

“But—”

“The ship comes first, Middie. That’s an order.”

“Aye, sir.”

Clement looked to Wilcock. “Give him whatever help he needs, Captain.”

Wilcock nodded and exchanged a knowing glance with Clement. The middie needed to be kept busy.

Clement nodded back to Wilcock, hoping he could trust him, then went back to the shuttle pilot’s nest.

“Time to the Beauregard?” he asked Pomeroy.

“Eight minutes, sir,” she replied.

“Get me Yan on the com.”

Pomeroy hooked up the com channel so he could raise his first officer on the link by switching to a private channel. “We have trouble coming, Yan. Prep the ship for battle, and fire up the Ion plasma drive,” he said.

“What’s happened? Our com link was cut off,” said Yan.

Clement held his tongue for just a second, contemplating his next words.

“This is no colony ship, Yan. It’s one hundred percent military, and unfortunately our presence there woke them up. They’ll be coming. For us.”

“Military? As in navy?”

“As in, invasion force. My guess is this is an Earth Ark, sent here to claim these planets before the 5 Suns Alliance can. And we’re stuck right in the middle of that squabble,” Clement said.

“She betrayed us?”

“She set us up, Yan, like we talked about in my cabin. It’s going to be up to us to survive on our own now.”

“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe—”

“Believe it, Yan. There’s no time for tears over lost loves. We’ll be on board in five minutes, Commander. Have my ship ready to fight or run when I get there,” finished Clement.

“Aye, sir, I will,” said Yan.

And with that Clement shut off the com line.


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