Phillip Peterson - The Dark Ship

Then—abruptly—there was silence. Jeff was sitting back in his seat. The vibrations had ceased and the alarm sirens had stopped. A quiet creaking noise moved through the metal girders of the cockpit, then that sound subsided, too. Breathing heavily, Jeff straightened up and looked around. He could see stars outside the cockpit windows. He exhaled slowly. The hyperdrive and the horizon had held out. They’d made it back to the normal universe. But had they come out in the right place?

“Lieutenant Green! Status!” Irons commanded.

The engineer coughed. “The hyperdrive actually made it.” His coughing turned into hysterical laughter.

“Get a grip, man! Give me the status of the systems.”

Green took a deep breath. “Yes, Sir. Most of the systems are offline, including the life support system. We’ve got several holes in the hull and some of the Vernier engines have failed. Voltage in the defective antimatter trap is still falling.”

“Time until malfunction?”

“Half an hour at most.”

“Lieutenant Rutherford?”

Joanne didn’t answer. Jeff turned around to look at her. The navigator was clasping her space helmet with her hands. Through the slightly fogged-up visor, Jeff could see blood on her forehead. “You OK, Joanne?”

“Yeah, I’m all right,” she said eventually. “I hit the console and banged my head. I’ll be OK in a sec.”

“Lieutenant Rutherford!” Irons’ voice was low but urgent.

“Yes, Sir. The maneuver was successful. We’re where we want to be. The asteroid must be somewhere in front of us.

“Corporal Herrmannsson?”

“I can see it. It really is right in front of us. Distance around sixty thousand miles. We’re approaching it at around two hundred and fifty miles per second. I’m transferring the vectors to the onboard computer.”

“Good, make a detailed analysis of the object. Lieutenant Rutherford, start the alignment maneuver. Bring us to standstill at a distance of three hundred miles, so we can find a place to land.”

“Yes, Sir!”

“Strange…”

“What’s strange, Corporal Herrmannsson?” Irons asked.

“The metal content is very high for an asteroid. There are also significant variations in density. As if it had huge empty spaces inside it.”

“cavitys?” Jeff asked. He was no astronomer and didn’t know what was normal for an asteroid and what wasn’t.

“Not of that size. Huh.”

“What?” Irons asked.

“The surface is composed not only of metallic compounds but also of complex alloys.”

“Which means…?”

“The predominant alloying elements are aluminum and copper, with traces of manganese and silicon. Other parts seem to consist of a nickel alloy with chromium and iron. Jesus, at home we call that Inconel-X and use it for most of our spaceships.”

“Are you trying to say that there are artificial structures on this asteroid?” the major asked.

Jeff leaned forward and looked out of the window. He couldn’t see anything. The object was too far away. Maybe there was a secret base there. Then they would be saved.

“No,” Finni replied after what felt like an eternity. “The whole thing seems to be made of these alloys. It isn’t an asteroid. It’s a man-made object.”

“With a diameter of almost six hundred miles?” Irons scoffed. “Impossible. Our largest space station is just three miles in diameter. Neither we nor the Alliance could have built anything of that size. You must be mistaken.”

“I’m not mistaken.” Finni sounded offended. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Then maybe something’s wrong with the instruments.”

“The instruments are working just fine!”

Irons frowned. “Give me a topographic scan.”

A three-dimensional hologram appeared between Irons’ and Jeff’s consoles. It had the approximate shape of a sphere and rotated slowly. It looked like an asteroid.

“Alignment maneuver completed,” Joanne announced.

Jeff leaned forward again. The object couldn’t be more than a few hundred miles away from them now. But all he could see was a huge black area that blocked out the stars behind it.

“I can’t see a thing,” Green grumbled.

“Of course not,” Irons answered dryly. “We’re in the middle of an interstellar void. There’s no sun here, so there’s no light to reflect off a celestial body. We’ll have to produce some light ourselves. Lieutenant Castle!”

“Sir?”

“Are the fusion rockets ready?”

A few second passed. “Laffette one is offline, but number two is ready to load.”

“Fire tangentially. Safety distance times two, radial one K. Active mass forty megatons.”

“Roger. Lafette two loaded and ready to fire.”

“Then fire!”

The firing of the rocket occurred in complete silence. They couldn’t hear anything in the cockpit.

“Rocket ejected. Detonation in three, two, one….”

Jeff squeezed his eyes shut to block out the light, then gradually opened them. He saw an alien object directly in front of them.

Jesus Christ! What is that?

“What the hell…?” Joanne’s voice trailed off before she could finish her question.

“Holy shit!” Finni whispered.

Even Major Irons let out a gasp of surprise.

That was no asteroid. It wasn’t a natural object at all. Sure, it had the nearly spherical shape of an asteroid, but it was made completely out of metal. The surface was covered in all kinds of weird projections—antenna-like structures that reached far into space, craggy outcrops, and jagged protrusions. It looked sinister and utterly inhospitable.

Jeff got goose bumps. Bizarre, totally bizarre.

The proportions were all wrong. Suspended in the middle of space, it looked like a megalomaniacal sculpture by a depressed and crazy artist—maybe something by H.R. Giger or Picasso.

The bright light of the fusion rocket faded away, plunging the thing in front of them back into total darkness. Jeff shook himself. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he had seen something he shouldn’t have.

“What the hell is that?” Joanne finished her sentence second time round.

“If only I knew,” Irons said in a strained voice.

Jeff turned around to look at him. It was the first time he had ever heard the major sound uncertain. “What shall we do?” he asked.

“Twenty minutes till the Penning trap gives up the ghost,” Green said.

“There’s your answer,” the major replied.

“You don’t seriously want to land on that thing?” Jeff asked.

“You mean dock,” Joanne said.

Dock… yes, it really did appear to be a giant spaceship or space station. But it seemed to be dead. There was no sign of life. No lights, no movement, nothing…

“Corporal Owens, call on all frequencies,” Irons seemed to have recovered himself.

“Call?” Owens looked confused. “Call who?”

“Our involuntary hosts. Who else?”

“You really think there are people living down there?”

“Aliens maybe…” Jeff whispered.

“Captain Austin?”

Jeff turned round to look at the major. He could only guess at the expression in his eyes behind the visor. “That thing can’t have been built by humans.”

Irons leaned forward to look out of the windows again. Jeff did the same. The outline of the mysterious object had merged back into the darkness of the interstellar void.

“I think you’re right,” Irons said. “Looks like we’ve discovered an alien artifact for the first time in human history.”

“This far inside the known sector?” Joanne retorted.

“It seems to be dead. It’s drifting far beyond our inhabited systems at half the speed of light. It might have been here for thousands of years without a chance of being discovered. In fact, it might have been sneaking its way through space for millions of years.”