CHAPTER 15 - CONTAINER
"Sir, are you sure this is a good idea?" Elektra said, as Patch and Temo Sabauri came back, the latter wearing heavy-duty goggles and both wielding massive, shiny-buzzsawed angle grinders.
"Yes. There doesn't seem to be a way to open it."
"Ummm, guuuys wait," Kuw sat down next to the canister, "there's a little hole here. Maybe check that out before going all saw maniac on it," she squinted at a spot underneath, nearly hidden by its rounded bulk.
The two carefully put down their hefty tools.
"Alright, nevermind what I said," Jamaad retained his sternness as he walked up to it. He huffed and puffed as he tried to roll the hefty object under heavy gravity… and failed to move it a centimeter. Whatever was inside must have been dense too.
Artur cracked his titanium-jointed knuckles, then silently and effortlessly pushed at it as much as was needed to expose the newly-discovered feature. Those around him merely looked on in amazement. The Canid then flexed and stepped back.
"This thing has to have a purpose," Rachel said, looking at the spherical incision. It was deep, but did not go all the way through the crust, instead stopping just short, and was perhaps half a centimeter across.
Patch tilted one of its camera-stalks towards the hole. An aperture could be heard adjusting as it focused on the inside. "It is featureless," Patch intoned.
Kuw thought for a few seconds and took out the stylus she used to type on her datapad's flip-out keyboard. It happened to be just the right size for the hole. Something clicked after she slid it inside.
"Maybe don't do that–" Jamaad was too late.
Then it clicked again, even louder than before. Light shone out of the round slot, its immensely bright beam casting a blinding spot on the ceiling even in the rich illumination of the ship's corridor. Kuw twitched out of the way before she could get blinded, thankfully.
"...huh," the captain scratched his head as Kuw giggled.
"Well, looks like we're maaaaaking progress?"
These microscopic fractal patterns Mo spoke about could now be seen wriggling like two immensely long and thin earthworms that got dug out of the ground. The entire capsule vibrated and rotated as it reshaped itself into an open trough-like object with four broad legs, no longer being able to roll. The light continued to shine even brighter, now coming from its exposed insides, accompanied by a high-pitched whine. Everyone ducked.
"Are we going to die?" Rachel whimpered, covering her eyes from the ever-growing light.
KA-SNAPPP-WHHHEOWWW!
The light disappeared, as if an antique lightbulb just burnt out inside the trough.
Elektra was the first to look inside, now unhindered by the radiance.
"...is that it?" she said, with an expression and tone resembling that of a child who opened a present only to discover a whistle or a mug.
Several others, including the captain, joined in. Inside of the newly-formed trough were several dozen glassy, completely clear spheres, each somewhat more than ten centimeters in diameter. So clear, in fact, that the only way to tell they were there was by their distortions of the glare on the reflective surface below them. These spheres seemed inert.
Rachel touched one of them and winced in pain as her hand recoiled. "Ow! Too hot!"
Jamaad sighed, as he was wont to do. "So they left us with… balls. Mo, work your magic on these things. But this time explain in normal language."
The genemod silently jabbed the scanner into one of the spheres. Then another. Then another. "These appear to be diamond, sir. There are lines of small perturbations in the crystal structure that may be a sign of them being some kind of data storage crystals, but that's about as much as a non-destructive scan can tell you. I may be wrong, and they may hold another purpose."
"Diamond. Huh. I would say we're rich, but this shit belongs in a museum. I originally wanted to space the container, but given how that thing transformed, it probably holds many secrets. We're keeping this."
"But it's so heavy!" Rachel said. "It'll slow us down."
"And? That won't kill us. To my knowledge, there are only two Silent artifacts currently anywhere in the Oval outside the Empire. Yes yes, every gram matters. Guess what matters more? The advancement of Terran– or really the free Oval as a whole– science."
"You haaaave a point, but it makes me think," Kuw replied, "if they're sooooo secretive, why would they just give something reverse-engineerable to uuuus?"
Rachel remembered her thoughts upon the group's approach. "These guys actually didn't seem so hostile. Maybe they wanted us to have this, for whatever reason?"
"Ensign Mo, I assign you the duty of performing further research on the object, as much as possible in our environment."
"Where would I do that?"
Jamaad contemplated the various options for a moment. "The entertainment room is both large enough and has relatively little traffic. You can go there."
"Really?" Mo said.
"Really. We have no other suitable space, but I bet you could glean more information about it and if it has any immediate use to us. I trust you to be cautious enough to not damage the artifact. Maybe ask one of the engineers to make a booth for you in the corner or something?"
"Well theeeeen," Kuw said, "I hope our gaming doesn't disturb you. We got back into it after, you know."
Mo seemed to accept the suggestion. "As long as you are not too loud, it should be fine. I have an adaptive sound-blocker addon in my BCI."
***
The ship very soon entered warp. The trough's top was secured with a magnetically-tethered tarp, so as to prevent the spheres from floating out, and in the zero-gravity it was easily moved to its spot in the entertainment room by Artur and Patch. However, the voices were nasty again this time around, almost as nasty as during the first jump. Near the trough, they seemed to be even worse. Patch suffered heavy adverse effects in the form of frequent glitches that overpowered its error-correction protocols, while Artur clutched his head immediately after tying the trough to the floor.
"What was that shit even about? I feel like my brain is getting burnt with a lighter," he said as they pushed out of the room.
"The Ugolnikov field appears to be affected by the spheres in some way, indicating that they are not simply large diamonds," Patch beeped.
Artur spat… in the nearest scrubber vent. "Oh the circus continues. Aren't the Ugolnikov drives fueled by big crystals? Maybe these aren't diamond but that kind of material?"
"Not likely, as Ugolnikov-Thompson compound composition is different from diamond composition. Possible scenario: porous UT crystal encased in thick diamond, with density thus indistinguishable from diamond, meaning its existence cannot be revealed by a scanner. The composition of UT compounds is…" Patch rattled off some immensely complicated words related to hyperphysics and exomaterial science.
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"You know, my head already hurts like shit, that isn't helping," Artur growled, but a smirk betrayed the fact that he was not actually angry at Patch.
Patch chimed. "I admit: I do not know what most of those terms mean in full actuality; I was merely pulling from my integrated database. Did you know that fewer than two hundred top-tier scientists out of twenty-five billion Terrans know how the Ugolnikov Drive truly works?"
Artur snorted. "How are they made then? The drives. If nobody knows how to make them."
"Did you ever play with construction-simulating toys or build model kits as a child?" the robot queried.
"Yeah I snapped those motherfuckers together since I was seven. Parents showed my little ships to everyone in school. I always liked them, maybe that's why I decided to enlist in the StarNavy. What about them?" he scratched his head.
"Could you manufacture these miniature girders, radiators, and modules yourself, and did you even theoretically know how to do so?"
"Um. No?"
"The same situation exists with life-sized ships. The people making them don't know how the parts actually work, in the majority of the cases. Else, the qualifications would simply be too high for the career to be tenable."
"Makes sense. Thank you Patch," he playfully fist-bumped one of the robot's manipulators.
***
Due to the very strong voices, everyone waited out the warp in the bunk room. Rachel and Kuw went to get some well-needed rest before their shift would come up. They were very drained and thus had an easy time falling asleep.
22 Apr 2231
Rachel looked at the time and date when she woke up. Less than two weeks had passed since the start of the mission, and they were already about halfway through. It sure felt like a much longer time. She wondered how they seemed to go so fast, considering the fact that it took a message almost a week just to go from Terra to New Arizona, but then she remembered: light had to travel between two messaging depots all the way across a system. This ship only needed to cross a small section of the system, which, due to its highly optimized Ugolnikov drive and strong conventional drives, was even smaller than what a real courier would have to cross. That was another reason courier ships were sometimes used over drones, in addition to their blockade-bypassing properties. And due to its very high thrust-to-weight ratio, this ship was also much faster than large warships. If a vessel like the Eternally Successful or Attila the Hun was sent on this mission, it would have taken a far longer time to get this far.
She shook Kuw awake. "Morning. Bet you'll be needed again today."
The relmai did not seem to sleep well at all. She groaned as she stumbled out of the room, looking and acting half-dead. A dose of a stimulant drink served to properly jolt her into consciousness, though. Breakfast was eaten even more quickly than usual, because, as Rachel stated, they were passing through a very busy and sensitive region.
They were alone in the CIC. Not even Patch was there this time.
The system was a large yellow dwarf, slightly heavier and thus whiter and brighter than Sol. Second of the five planets was Glubb-enn itself, a temperate lacustrine world which had a very flat environment thanks to its high gravity and low tectonic activity.
"Ya know," Kuw said as she peeked at the screen, "whyyyy are their names all like that? I never asked that while we were studying this region. Glubb-enn Domain, home of the glubb-enn species, with Glubb-enn the capital system containing the homeworld Glubb-enn."
"Different cultures, different naming conventions," Rachel shrugged, "and they say humans are bad at names. And besides, since they're amorphous blob-things, having all the names be homogenous makes sense."
"You are, though!" Kuw giggled, "Your planet names seem to be either random gods from your old cultures, or just 'new' with a place on Earth appended to it."
"It's evocative enough. It's not like they're completely random."
"I suppooose that makes sense. I still prefer our kinda names. Just words, but used in complex and poetic ways."
Rachel turned back to the screen. There were many, many, many ships here, more than anywhere else the ship visited, even more than in Mournful Signal, though of course they were less advanced. They clustered around free-floating stations as well as every planet in the system. Even in a fairly minor power like this, the stellar capital was always bustling with activity. These ships, in spite of their owners being about as non-humanoid as possible, actually resembled Terran vessels in their construction, with the main design differences being only apparent to someone with a trained eye, like Rachel. There was a concentration of military vessels on the system's borders, including many much heavier than the Pheidippides, but as Glubb-enn was in a state of civil war, it made sense.
Nobody approached, nobody hailed, and it seemed like this would be another unremarkable leg in the journey, like Vkyaa.
Rachel simply leaned back, occasionally spinning around in her chair to look at Kuw.
A sensor ping resounded, indicating that a large ship warped in nearby. It was a battleship, bristling with weapons that could blow away any smaller vessel in an instant. Rachel raised an eyebrow but didn't pay it much attention as it did not seem to be a pirate vessel.
There was another ping. And another. Then a whole cascade of pings started. Battleships, cruisers, destroyers, eluders all exited warp at the border of the system, all moving towards the planet Glubb-enn. Their drives were running full blast, the plumes coordinated to ensure that no ships in the task group get sliced in half, but most likely not performing these safety calculations with regards to the little scout. They began launching missiles at nearby Glubb-enn military vessels that did not belong to the invading fleet.
"Looks like the rebels are here! We're right in the middle of them! What the hell is this timing?!"
Kuw clutched her head in panic. "Are they attacking us?"
"No but we should be really fucking careful... out of the frying pan into the fire eh? Don't red alert yet!"
Kuw stammered something incoherent in her native language before suddenly regaining composure, sprinting to the comms console, and hailing the largest of the rebels' vessels, which she figured was the flagship. According to its transponder, its name was Uuuub-mmmgnenn the Viscous IV.
The other ship's CIC was a very low room with a ceiling so close to the floor that a human would have to crouch heavily to move inside it. It was very bright, and all six surfaces had many levers, lights, and buttons. Several glubb-enn, looking like amorphous, many-pseudopodded blobs with a consistency and color between that of gelatin and snot, were slithering and flowing around. Varying amounts of eyes, all black, floated inside their body-mucus. Small, colorful cubes, pyramids, and spheres floated inside their bodies. These were seemingly their equivalent of uniforms.
Rachel instinctually half-winced, but kept her primal disgust under control. She was a good Terran, after all, and refused to let her psychological reflexes cloud her opinions on another sapient being.
Kuw, on the other hand, did not even flinch.
"Hello!" She said to the second-largest glubb-enn, whose body was dotted with pink dodecahedra, then introduced herself, the ship, and their mission, without sensitive details of course. Then came the payload of her message. "We just want to pass through the system and don't meaaaan to interfere with your struggle. Also, our mission is such that its failure might spell doom for not just the Alliance, but the Abyssal Sphere. Please trust us. Could you please make the necessary adjustments to your fleet's trajectories to ensure that we are not put into any danger?"
The glubb-enn comms officer introduced themself, via a synthesized voice of course. "I am Nnnnugm-mmmnuua the Eleventh, Grand Communicator of the Second Glubb-enn. We cannot bend to you. Apologizing?"
"What? Why?"
"We cannot bend to you. Apologizing?"
This oddly reminded her of the bureaucratic issues at the chohjozra station. Except this time, she did not feel like she would manage to push through. "Well then, we kindly request that you do not take any immediate hostile actions. We will do the same."
"Understood. Apologizing for inconvenience?"
"Oh. Your apology iiiis accepted!" Kuw smiled.
"Goodbye."
"Bye!"
Kuw turned to look at Rachel after sitting back down on the captain's seat. "Looks like we'll neeeeed to dodge their plumes and their shots, huh."
Rachel let out a deep, pained sigh and slammed her face onto the desk. "When will this end?"
"When we get back home," Kuw smiled.
"Will we?" she turned around, and Kuw could see that she was crying.
"Yeeees. Please don't lose hope. Without hope you are nooooothing."
***
Mo was alone in the entertainment room, isolated with the trough behind a small curtain of soundproof nanofabric. This makeshift booth also contained all the analysis equipment that the ship brought, which was admittedly not much, but which was even more capable than the handheld scanner the materials engineer had. He borrowed it from Achariya.
Radd Grant carefully opened the curtain. "What are you working on dawg?"
"...the refraction of light in the spheres is off… from what would be expected for the 100% diamond scenario by…" he mumbled unintelligibly, "which, while not large… is definitely statistically significant…"
What followed was a string of complicated jargon that simply confused Radd. He just stood there and waited until Mo stopped talking.
"So like, do they do anything other than make Artur have a migraine?"
Mo looked up from the analyzer machine. "Yes. I know more now. Barely scratching the surface, but more than I did before. Sit down, I will explain, it will blow your mind."