Enigma: A Far From Home Novel (10 page)

“True,” Davies said.

“So I think the Namar must have had their food and water supplied directly in their homes. I can’t think of anything else to call them. They are, after all, quite obviously designed with two occupants in mind.”

“You think they had couples living together? Men and women?” Chang asked.

Gentry shrugged. “Why not? For that matter, who’s to say it wasn’t homosexual couples? Whatever the case, there were two in each one. And I believe that if we really looked – and knew what we were looking for – we would find a food and water source.”

Chang looked around at the strange world they’d found themselves exploring. A circular world, where the sky was the ground and the ground the sky. “So they didn’t just sleep here. They lived here. This was intended as a home from home.”

“Precisely. This is why I believe they would have also brought with them whatever religious belief their society acknowledged.”

“You’re saying these are churches?” Davies asked.

Gentry led the way inside. Behind him, Commander Chang un-holstered her sidearm and turned off the safety. Her caution proved to be unfounded as the building was completely empty… of anything. For all intents and purposes it was merely an empty box. A metal shell with nothing in it except a light source in the ceiling, and a weak one at that.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she said.

Dr. Gentry waved his arms about to indicate the empty space around them. “No seats. Nothing here. Apart from this slightly elevated platform at one end. Not unlike the chancel where a minister might address his flock, no?”

“I agree,” Peter Davies said. “And it feels somehow different in here, don’t you think?”

“Churches always do,” Gentry said.

Chang almost shivered. “Let’s continue.”

They investigated several homes, and found each one of them as empty as the rest. It should have put her mind at ease, knowing that they were alone in there. But it didn’t. All Chang could think about was how eerily deserted the place was. How much like a ghost town it was to her.

And how such an empty world made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

Her apprehension was broken, however, when the first crack of lightning erupted over their heads.

Dr. Gentry ducked reflexively. “
WHOA!
That was close!”

The wind rushed up at them, and Chang noticed for the first time that while they’d been poking about, clouds had formed in the air above.

“Let’s get under shelter. I think we’re going to experience some of that bad weather you were talking about,” she said.

They made for the closest Namarian house, and just in the nick of time. The sky opened up after them, and it began to rain in C-1.

31.

They disembarked from the tram. It had exited the tunnel, only to come to a full stop amid the pitch black. Regardless they filed out, finding themselves on the same nondescript decking they’d found in C-1.

“Again, the air in here smells old,” Jessica said.

Smell of a tomb,
she didn’t add. Dr. Oriz would take great joy in thinking the Captain approved of her notion that the
Enigma
was some kind of tomb. She personally didn’t believe that to be the case at all. After all, why put it here? Why expend so much of their – at the time – very limited resources in building the
Enigma
only to leave it to the unpredictable extremities of space?

There had to be something here.

“And it’s cold in here,” Selena Walker said. “If we weren’t wearing our suits, we’d be frozen right now.”

“Makes me wish I’d brought my helmet and not left it in C-1,” Rayne said. “I think my lips are blue.”

Captain King’s comm. system beeped. She answered it.

“Captain! It’s Commander Chang!”
the voice on the other end yelled.

“I hear you, Commander. What’s wrong? What’s that noise?”

There was a loud, almost drumming noise accompanying Chang’s voice. It made it hard to hear her.

“Hail!”

King looked up at the others, a frown on her face. “Sorry?”

“Captain, it’s hail! We’re experiencing some kind of storm in here. We’ve taken shelter.”

“I — I see, Commander. Very well. Remain there until it subsides. Keep me posted.”

“Yes Captain.”

The line cut off.

“
Hail!
Who’d have thought it?” Rayne said in a near laugh.

Jessica nodded slowly. “This place is full of surprises.”

There was a dim illumination from the parked tram, but apart from that an unknown darkness that surrounded them.

“Captain, we should probably consider the possibility that the
Enigma
is a collection of three habitat cylinders,” Walker offered. “It would make sense, if it was intended for a vast number of people to live on.”

“True, but –” Jessica started to say but she did not get any further. For right then the lights came on in C-2, momentarily blinding them all.

Once his eyes had adjusted, Gary Belcher was the first to look around.

“Uh, I don’t think we’re in a habitat exactly,” he said.

Lieutenant Jackson was the next to find that his eyesight had returned. “In the name of . . .” he managed to mumble as he gazed at what was there before them.

32.

Just as Captain King had said, the
Enigma
was full of surprises.

A giant axle ran through the middle of C-2, at least half a kilometre thick. Along its length were lights similar in design to those in C-1, but very small. Due to that, there were a great number of them all over the giant axle, and they reminded Jessica somewhat of Christmas tree lights. Every conceivable inch of surface area within the cylinder seemed to be covered in some form of tech or other. There were what could only be star fighters. Even two ships about half the size of the
Defiant
nestled amongst the fighters and weaponry.

“This is no generation ship,” Selena Walker said as she gazed up. “And it isn’t a simple habitat, either.”

“No,” Jessica said. “This is a ship of war.”

* * *

“I can’t believe it,” Belcher said. “So much tech in here. It’ll take an age just to go through it.”

“I don’t think we have that long, Mister, but I’ll try,” Jessica said, opening a channel with the
Defiant
. “This is the Captain. Please have the
Defiant
on standby. We have discovered a vast array of weaponry in here and are about to catalogue what we can.”

“Understood, Captain,”
the voice on the other end answered.

“If you see any change whatsoever in the
Enigma
, notify me. Captain out.”

Jessica closed the channel.

* * *

The rain and hail ceased. No sooner than it had begun, the severe weather had stopped. When Chang, Davies and Dr. Gentry stepped outside, they found it wet but warm. The clouds had dissipated to a thin, wispy layer of strata. The thunder and lightning had gone, too.

“It was as if the ship cleared its throat after being woken up after so long,” Davies said.

Dr. Gentry laughed. “Yes! That’s it! The mighty giant wakes, stretches, has a good cough. Now all is well.”

Chang detected movement to her left. Her head snapped about, her hand simultaneously grabbing for the gun in its holster. “Quiet,” she ordered.

The other two followed her line of sight. There was definitely something moving out there, about twenty metres away.

“What is it?” Davies whispered.

“Stay here,” Chang said and she edged forward. Using the houses as cover, she made her way forward. There it was again. Directly ahead. A rush of something grey, so fast it was a near blur. A now she could hear it, too. A
clitter-clatter
sound on the wet stone floor.

She thumbed her sidearm off of safety and held it in front of her, at the ready. The sound again. The clitter-clatter of claws. Big heavy claws. Chang tried to shake the image, but it wouldn’t go. She pictured some atrocity awaiting her. Her heart thudded in her ears and she swallowed, her throat dry as dust.

Chang silently stepped out from behind one of the houses and found herself less than six feet away from it. She gripped the gun with both hands, the barrel aimed directly at it.

The creature turned to look at her, its eyes on stalks that wavered left and right. The round black eyes at the ends twitched hideously. It studied her for several seconds, then scuttled away, seemingly uninterested. Chang opened a comm. channel to the Captain and tried not to let the nerves make her voice sound shaky as she reported what they’d found.

33.

“Life?”
King asked on the other end.

“Yes Captain. I’m going to relay visual back to the
Defiant
. It looks like a scorpion. Dull grey in colour. About a metre tall, six legs, with kind of hooked feet. Two clawed arms at the front,” Chang said.

“Has it seen you?”

“Yes. It looked at me, then disregarded my presence. I wonder if it’s decided I’m not a threat,” Chang told her. “Though at the time I did have my sidearm pointed at it.”

“Understandably so,”
King said.
“Where is it now?”

“Moving away. I’m following, but at a distance.”

“Good. Commander, ensure you have Doctor Gentry and Mister Davies there with you. Stay together. There are probably more.”

“Yes Captain, I’ll signal them to meet me now.”

“See what you can find out, Commander. And make sure you include all of us in your feed to the
Defiant
. One other thing,”
King said.
“You said it resembles a scorpion. Well, from what you’ve described so far it sounds more like a lobster than anything else.”

“Oh yes, indeed, very much like a lobster,” Chang explained. “It’s the giant pincer on the back end that makes it look like a scorpion.”

“I see. A weapon of some kind?”

“I don’t believe so,” Chang said. “I think it’s more of an appendage. A third arm.”

“Okay, Commander. Get that feed up so we can see it for ourselves. And if you need any of us in there, just give the word and we’ll be with you on the double.”

Chang closed the channel, then signalled both Dr. Gentry and Peter Davies. “Boys, you need to get here fast. We have contact.”

34.

The video feed streamed simultaneously from Commander Chang’s unit to the
Defiant
, Team One and Team Three. Everyone on the
Defiant
‘s bridge watched as Chang approached the grey creature she’d dubbed a “scorpion.” It sensed her presence, stopped and turned to face her. Chang rummaged in her pack for a ration. She pulled out a packet of crackers, broke one in half and tossed it at the ground in front of the scorpion. It’s eyes lowered on their stems to look at the food, then it picked the half cracker up with one pincer. For such a big appendage, its movements were swift and light. The cracker did not so much as crumble under the creature’s grip. In a curious gesture, it lifted the cracker up to its eyes and looked it over before putting it to its mouth. Small teeth took a bite, but the cracker evidently wasn’t appealing in any way.

It soon spat the mouthful of dry cracker out, put the rest back where it had found it, and continued on its way.

“As you can see,” Chang said to the camera. “It’s as if we aren’t here. It’s not interested.”

Team Two followed the scorpion for more than ten minutes as it made its way through C-1, in a perfectly straight line. It ended up at a barely visible mark on the stone floor. As it drew close, the floor opened up to reveal a hatchway. The scorpion disappeared into it, and the hatch closed directly after.

Davies stepped forward, tapped a foot against the spot where there’d previously been a gaping hole. The hatch didn’t budge. In fact it was so inconspicuous that no-one would have noticed it had they not seen it open just then.

“There is evidently some kind of network under the ground to facilitate these creatures,” Dr. Gentry reasoned off camera. With something to occupy his mind, and ignite his curiosity, Gentry seemed calmer. More stable than he had before.

“Whatever they are,” Chang said.

Davies looked up and pointed off to the left. “Look! Another two.”

About fifty metres away, two of the scorpions were scaling one of the box houses. Chang zoomed in. “They look like they’re testing the structure somehow.”

“Yes, that would make sense,” Dr. Gentry said.

“What d’you mean?” Davies asked.

Gentry smiled. “Have you not worked it out yet? They are not a part of this vessel’s defences, else they would have attacked us by now. No, they are something far different.”

“And what’s that?” Chang asked.

“Maintenance.”

35.

“You’re sure it won’t be seen as hostile, Doctor? Captain King asked Gentry after she’d ridden back to C-1 on the tram.

Dr. Gentry shook his head. “I’m certain that whatever controls have released these beings into C-1 has no more intelligence than a calculator. It’s an automated system. The habitat has been revived, the weather permutations have settled into a nice rhythm… it’s another part of the
Enigma
coming back to life. The scorpion creatures are just another stage.”

“Well, if you’re certain. I don’t want to instigate something we’ll regret later,” she told him.

It had been Dr. Gentry’s idea to trap one of the scorpions somehow and have it taken aboard the
Defiant
for study. Commander Chang hadn’t been convinced, however, and Jessica had travelled back to C-1 along with Dana Oriz specifically to iron it out with Dr. Gentry.

“I agree with Dr. Gentry,” Dana told her. “There’s nothing intelligent about any of this. Whatever these things are, they’re more or less automated. Or have very limited awareness. They’re on this ship to do a specific job and I think that’s it.”