Drift of Night, Part One (standard:science fiction, 2610 words)
Author: Vincent Collevera	Added: Apr 04 2010	Views/Reads: 2752/1946	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Captain Katherine Rimes comes from a long line of highly skilled pilots. Being the black sheep of the family, she has opted for a career in cargo transport rather than the military like her brother, both parents, grandparents, and so on. En route to the

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sensor and began to change into one of the several zero-atmosphere 
suits velcroed to the wall outside the airlock. 

The suit was nearly skin-tight and difficult to get into, but with
perseverance and a little elbow-grease she was able to manage.  The 
heads-up display that was projected on the inner surface of the 
polarized visor showed her a readout of her vital signs and the time 
limit on her air supply.  After a final check, she opened the inner 
airlock door and stepped in.  The closing two-foot thick steel door 
made a loud grating noise that she could feel through the soles of her 
feet. 

She didn't need the HUD to tell her that her heart rate had just spiked;
the inner airlock door closing behind her always made her nervous.  She 
put herself through a breathing exercise to relax and watched as her 
pulse returned to normal before hitting the combination of buttons on 
the keypad on the wall that flushed the atmosphere out of the airlock. 

The knowledge of being in a vacuum was a sensation that raised the hairs
on the back of her neck, even after all these years.  She knew there 
was no actual tactile difference to her from within the confines of her 
suit aside from it being slightly less skin-tight, but that made little 
difference to her instincts of self-preservation.  She hit the final 
command on the keypad and the outer airlock door opened with a muted 
grind that vibrated the soles of her boots.  Belatedly, she grabbed the 
safety cable that would clip to her belt and keep her from 
free-floating out into the abyss if the docking clamps came loose and 
secured it to herself. 

"Distracted, Captain?"  Beowulf murmured in her earpiece.  It always
threw her how intimate his voice sounded when it was coming from a 
microphone millimeters from her ear as opposed to the omni-directional 
sound in the ship.  "I'm fine.  Track me during my progress and if I 
fail to respond to your queries, reel me in."  She ordered more 
brusquely than she had intended.  She had to fight the urge to 
apologize to the computer program.  He was so human sometimes!  And he 
would probably get offended if she said that. 

She took the few steps forward necessary to carry her across the Bay
floor and into the foreign vessel.  The moment she set foot on the deck 
of the other ship, she bounced towards the ceiling.  There was no 
artificial gravity in effect here.  She caught herself on the ceiling 
with her hands and absorbed the force by bending her arms and stopped 
herself.  A slight push was all she needed to touch her feet lightly to 
the deck again.  She used the small keypad on her left forearm to 
activate the Gecko adhesive system on the underside of her boots. 

The soles of her boots extended micro-thin fibers with split ends that
created a super-static bond with whatever surface they were on at a 
nearly molecular level.  The Gecko system would keep her from being 
sucked out of the ship in the event of a massive hull breech.  Or they 
would allow her to stick to the non-metallic deck of an alien vessel 
without artificial gravity. 

The interior of the ship was not at all what she expected to find.  It
was completely hollow with no lights that she could see nor electronics 
of any kind.  The twin beams from her helmet's flashlights cut through 
particles of dust suspended in the emptiness, disturbed now into swirls 
and gyrations by her entrance.  In the center of the void-space was a 
large crate roughly seven feet long by three and a half feet wide and 
two feet tall.  It almost looked like a particularly flat coffin.   
“Okie, dokie then.”  She muttered the archaic phrase to herself in 
puzzlement.  Upon closer inspection, she saw that the container was 
completely seamless from what she could see and unadorned.  “I've found 
what appears to be a container of some kind.  I'm going to attempt to 
lift it by hand and bring it on board for further scanning and study.  
Bio-seal Bay Nine and prepare to bring the craft into the repair dock.” 
 She said into the microphone in her helmet.  There was no reply; not 
even static.  “Beowulf, respond.”  Her command went unanswered again. 

Feeling apprehensive now, she placed her hands on the top edge of the
container and pushed gently.  True to her intentions, it tilted up on 
edge.  She estimated that it took close to ten minutes of small 
adjustments and motion to float the object toward the airlock back into 
her ship.  Estimation was necessary because the HUD appeared to be on 
the fritz with the com.  Her vitals still showed, but the time had 
stopped.  The moment the rear end of the container left the threshold 
of the alien vessel, it dropped heavily to the deck of the Bay.  She 
stumbled into it and began to float over it.  The same rules applied to 
her as to the crate.  Cursing, she lifted herself back onto her feet. 

“That was fast, Captain.  Very fast.”  The intimate baritone murmuring
in her ear sent a momentary tingle up her spine.  “Stop doing that.”  
She snapped.  “And what do you mean that was fast, I was in there at 
least fifteen minutes while some kind of interference silenced the com. 
 By the way, why the hell didn't you reel me in?”  She asked in 
annoyance.  “Captain, you were inside for a total of two-point-seven 
seconds before the foreign object dropped to my deck.”   His voice only 
ever had hints of inflection, but long acquaintance with him had taught 
her to read the subtle differences.  He was scared. 

It made sense that he would be.  Temporal displacement was still only a
theory, and not a very sound one at that.  To keep panic or shock from 
setting in, she put her hands to use stripping off the tether and 
shutting the airlock doors.  "Beowulf, I need the Dolly to get this 
thing moved to storage and then we need to get the hell out of here.  
Set course corrections to get us back on schedule and pull the craft 
into Bay Nine.  I'll be in the cockpit as soon as I'm done strapping 
down this space-coffin."  Her voice sounded steady and her hands didn't 
shake, so she took it as a good sign and continued working.  The Dolly 
came rolling smoothly down the corridor on its tank treads and stopped 
in front of her.  She activated her forearm-mounted interface and used 
the holographic control console that popped up to operate the Dolly.  
It extended two thin forks from its front and maneuvered around to one 
end of the crate.  The forks slid easily under the edge and all the way 
down its length before lifting up and retracting back onto the top of 
the machine.  Long hours of practice using this equipment for much the 
same thing during maintenance between offload and load up made it a 
quick, easy process.  She strapped it to the Dolly, which weighed in at 
a little over a ton and had electromagnets built into it to secure it 
to the deck.  A typed command into the holopanel sent it to the cargo 
hold in Bay 9 and had it secure itself between a pair of large plasteel 
containers. 

That finished, she properly stowed her away suit, tether, and harness
and jogged back up to the cockpit.  Her captain's chair was still warm 
when she sat down, panting, and lit another cigarette.  "How do we 
look?"  She asked around the filter in her mouth.  "I look like I 
haven't been washed in a decade and you look much the same, Captain.  
As far as our course, a few more adjustments and we should only be 
roughly two and one half hours behind schedule.  What do you plan on 
doing with the object and craft now that they are on board?"  She 
chewed her lower lip in contemplation while she strapped back in. 

"It's only been a few days since my last shower and I had the ship
detailed before we left, so quit complaining.  And I want to know 
what's inside that crate.  Go ahead and set up a sterile room in the 
Infirmary and send the Dolly there.  I'll go take a shower and then go 
there to see if I can cut it open.  Do you know where I left the plasma 
torch?"  She unstrapped herself again and headed back towards her 
cabin.  “The plasma torch is on your tool belt, Captain.  Water supply 
is optimal and the hot water has been repaired.”  He was making his 
voice come from only one speaker at a time as she neared them.  He did 
that sometimes to let her know he was paying attention to where she 
was.  “Thanks, Beowulf.  Turn off the video sensors in the cabin and 
have a maintenance bot take my belt to the Infirmary.” 

“Yes, Captain.”  Came the reply.  It was true that he was just an
artificial intelligence program, but she still wasn't comfortable with 
the idea of him seeing her naked.  He was just too human sometimes.  
She was certain that he was flirting with her on occasion and she 
wasn't quite sure how to take it.  He was an older program, having come 
with the ship.  It was said that after a while, certain subroutines 
became corrupted or damaged, causing quirks in personality.  She didn't 
know for sure, though. 

Her shower was quick, and true to his word; it was hot.  She stepped
into the air dryer, where blasts of slightly above room-temp air would 
dry her much more quickly and thoroughly than a towel would.  
Navigating the minor disaster that was her quarters with the minimal 
effort of long acquaintance and dressing herself in a cleaner-smelling 
leotard, she sped down the causeway to the Infirmary. 

“Captain, I have taken the liberty of running a scan on the microbes
attached to your suit when you returned from the alien vessel.  
Molecular composition indicates they were particles of humanoid 
life-forms, however genetic identification was impossible due to almost 
total destruction of tissues.” 

She sighed and shook her head as she palmed open the Infirmary doors. 
“Try again, Beowulf.  In English, this time.”  “In short, Captain; one 
or more humanoids were vaporized inside that vessel, likely by security 
protocols that are now inactive due to power failure.” 

The maintenance bot whirred quietly as it held her tool belt out towards
her on one of its many little robotic arms.  She could hear the blood 
rushing in her ears, and her heart was suddenly pounding like a 
pneumatic hammer.  “You mean to say that I would have been vaporized by 
some alien booby-trap if the ship's batteries weren't kaput?” 

“In a nutshell, yes.  You really do take entirely too many risks,
Katherine.  By the way, I attempted to scan the container you brought 
aboard, but it is impervious to my sensors.  I have doubts as to 
whether or not you will be able to open it with a plasma torch.” 


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