Art by Rain Elegy
Previous Chapter 16: https://onthebeachatnightalone.com/2023/10/13/fiction-the-girassian-debacle-chapter-16-like-a-pit-that-would-swallow-them/
London’s XO, Commander Gray, watched the external video feed together with Captain Maureau and their biodroid pilot, Yoshi. The London moved at a steady speed under Yoshi’s navigational and engineering control. The steady state of systems allowed bridge officers to look up from their consoles now and again to steal a glance at the EVA team’s progress.
“Lieutenant Song is moving slowly,” Gray said. “It’s going to take her twenty minutes to arrive at target. ”
“Fifteen minutes, thirty-eight seconds, to be precise, Ma’am,” Yoshi said. Gray ignored the BDP and put her hands on her hips. Maureau remained silent.
“They are proceeding with caution,” Maureau said. “There is no problem with that.” Song led the team. They watched Nansted accelerate past her.
Song’s voice interrupted Maureau.“Bridge. Song here. We are having navigation problems. AIC has been informed. Our pulse rockets are working erratically, sometimes opposite how they should. Why is that? Is this a programming issue?”
Yoshi vigorously shook its head. “The ghost ship just quivered,” Yoshi said, suddenly climbing out of the jump seat’s harness into a squatting position. The BDP hung onto the harness as it rotated one hundred eighty degrees to an upside down orientation relative to Maureau and Gray.
What do you mean it ‘quivered’? Gray said clenching her fists. “God damn it, BDP. Use standard Star Force terminology!”
“The ship vibrated. It appeared to shiver. It shuddered. Energy coursed through it. A wave of light rolled over the hull, jumping from the nidus of energy to the surface…”
“.. and what is going on with Song’s navigation?” Maureau said.
Before Yoshi could say anything more, the bridge screen blinked and a different Emissary than on their initial contact appeared onscreen. Yoshi said nothing more but nodded towards the screen while rapidly flipping itself to squat on the jumpseat, harness over its shoulders.
This Emissary wore an inky, dark blue helmet with the spiral of the Milky Way sweeping over it. The dark blue chest armor displayed a platinum lion’s face looking directly out.
“London. I am Daemone, Master of the Emissaries.” The Emissary’s voice flowed like a deep stream over boulders. “You are in great danger. You should leave and get as far away from this ship as you can.”
The Emissary raised its right hand as if to halt any protests. “I will repeat. Leave the vicinity of the ship immediately.” The communication blinked out. No more information.
“Damn it!” Maureau shouted. “Get the marines back, stat. Yoshi fire up the impulse reactors. Sound the alarm to prepare for hard acceleration.” Maureau wondered what happened for the Emissaries to change their communication to a warning.
Yoshi also raised its voice. “Captain! The entire ghost ship is powered up.”
#
Unpracticed in working together, Lieutenant Krista Song’s line of marines drifted apart immediately upon moving forward. Nansted floated past Song and became the lead way out in front of her. “Nansted, you need to hold back.”
Nansted breathed heavily. “I know, Sir. I know!”
The EVA team had moved forward three hundred meters when a wave of light pulsed in both directions from the needle ship’s amidships. It laid down scarlet lines glowing like dying embers. They branched out from amidships and framed the beaconing void that the body of the ship had become.
Song sensed a call out of the abyss inside the ship. She squeezed her eyes and shook her head. The feeling did not relent but rather overwhelmed her, taking her breath away and paralyzing her for what seemed agonizing minutes. She knew it had to be only seconds, given the actions taking place around her.
“What the…” she started, when the call came from Commander Gray, her voice high. Excited. “EVA team, return to the London. Stat!. Return to the London.
“What’s happening?” Song said to the bridge.
“It’s come alive.” Song thought the garbled voice sounded like Yoshi’s, except it was twisted in despair, an emotion a biodroid should not have.
#
Yoshi spoke in an atonal voice, like a computer. “The energy nidus has triggered current throughout the ship. The ghost ship has powered up. There are thirty life forms detectable. They appear in buds at the end of branches from a surface network . Five have left their buds. They are moving rapidly. ”
“This is AIC. All of the EVA team report their pulse rockets are not working correctly. Controls seem reversed.”
“How many are affected?” Maureau said.
“All of them, the entire team. They are being pulled towards the ghost ship.”
Maureau got out of his chair and looked down at Yoshi. The biodroid looked blankly off into space. “What is happening, Yoshi?” With that kind of look, I hope you are coming up with a solution.
Yoshi’s eyes came back into focus and he looked directly at Maureau. “The laws of physics are not behaving near the ghost ship. The ghost ship is drawing things in towards it, including the London.It is building up energy, possibly for a destructive discharge, possibly for transportation. But Yoshi has a solution to move the team away from the ghost ship.”
“Get the team back. Anyway you have to. And get us away from this ghost.” Maureau looked in alarm “at the holographic display showing the EVA team moving rapidly towards the ghost ship.
#
Trying to counter the pull towards the ghost ship, Song could not resist firing her power pack’s pulse rockets, only to accelerate towards the ship, not pull away. The response to her controls made no sense. Regardless of which rockets she fired, it was not possible to predict what would happen. Before she could figure out her controls, her pulse rockets cut off.
Helpless, she drifted towards the ghost ship while watching Nansted accelerate well ahead of the team by fifty meters. Her pulse rockets fired again without her input. She felt like she floated in gelatin. “London, what’s going on?”
“EVA team, Yoshi took control of your team’s power packs,” Gray said over the com. “Trust him! It’s got to work!”
Song slowed down to a stop and then changed directions back towards the London. Her pulse rockets rapidly alternated the direction of their fire. All of her team reversed directions except for Nansted. He slowed down but continued to be drawn towards the ghost ship.
An oval of scarlet light dropped off one of the hull’s scarlet branches, opened like a mouth, and then closed. Song marveled that the interior of the ship through the mouth appeared even darker than the hull, a realm of even deeper fathoms of hopelessness. A bubble of it moved towards Nansted.
“Do you see the figures leaving the ship?” Song was surprised by the alarm in Gray’s voice. “They’re converging on Nansted.”
“Bridge. I don’t see any life forms,” she responded. “I do see movement like a heat way or something.”
“I don’t see anything,” Nansted shouted, but he shouldered his pulse rifle and started to randomly shoot towards the ghost ship. The rifle’s packs of energy disappeared into the ghost ship.
Suddenly, the rifle jerked out of his hands and disappeared. A blanket of darkness drifted over him. With the lower half of his body lost to sight, the shadow of two arms wrapped around his helmet. On the EVA team’s coms they heard Nansted give out a scream that faded into a sucking away of his voice, like the sound of a liquid vortex plunging down a drain. He disappeared as blackness covered him despite the London’s spotlights .
“London! Yoshi. Put on our heads up what you’re sensing.” Her face shield lit up with images of five swirling forms, sometimes with discernible limbs, enwrapping Nansted. Song gasped. Between them she saw Nansted, folded in half.
They rapidly returned to the ship. Just before arriving at the airlock bay, the scarlet mouth opening again. Song’s heads up imaging showed a fluidic shadow extend and envelop the five forms along with Nansted. They became one with the ship.
Like her power pack’s pattern of fire, the London rapidly alternated the direction of her impulse rockets’ firing. Song discerned a regular pattern to their blasts and watched the London start to move away from the ghost ship. An expanding glow from the ghost ship moved outwards towards the London.
The Marines, some suited up for space, waited in the bay. With Yoshi controlling their pulse rockets, the surviving EVA team caught up with the London. The doors of the airlock opened in coordination with the outer door closing just as the inner door opened. The timing allowed the team to glide into the bay without breaking to a stop, the ship’s atmosphere preserved. They dropped onto the waiting marines creating a tangle of bodies thudding into the bulkhead.
Song pushed out of the pile of marines and moved away from the bulkhead. She struggled against an inexplicable leaden weariness to an airlock portal to see the ghost ship surrounded by an expanding, pulsing halo. The distance between the ships widened as the London just barely outran the halo. Inside its bright halo, the ghost ship flashed brighter and disappeared pulling along the the halo.
The flash left an afterimage of the needle-shaped ship. A force that had held the London back released andthe London suddenly accelerated, driving her team hard against the deck. The afterimage faded together revealing an oval window in the matrix of interplanetary space.
Through this window shown a black planet with white bands, a black and white version of Jupiter. Slowly, the night of the Solar System flowed inwards to cover up the window into the alter-universe.
#
Fifteen minutes after the ghost ship’s disappearance the bridge monitor flickered with a third Emissary filling the screen. Its golden helmet and armor glowed like molten metal. It spoke in a voice that had the calmness of still air before sunrise.
“London, we see you are still intact and that the alien has left. Captain Maureau, you are to proceed immediately to the Portal City. We have forwarded your message to Central Command but removed the data on a “splinter in the eye of God” as your BDP referred to it. Do not communicate further information to Star Force, except that the “nil-void”, as your BDP named the anomaly, has closed.
“You will be contacted regarding the time of our meeting. We will send an escort to the London’s berth. Get some rest. You will need it for your meeting with us.”
On the Beach At Night Alone 