Several hours later the warning beeper went off. I looked over at Laura, who had fallen asleep in one of the command chairs. She rubbed her eyes, and looked at the monitor. On the monitor it appeared that three ships were coming in fast. Really fast, faster than anything humans had at that point. Laura looked at me. She suddenly looked pale.
“Alex... There are three ships coming in. Impossibly fast. Alex... What are they?”
“I have no idea. Power down everything. Minimal life support, then get a suit on and get back here as fast as you can go.”
She hit the power down display and turned off everything on her side of the controls, and I did the same on mine, going to passive sensors, minimal electric and cooling the ship to 0°. She was already getting the suit on. In fact she had it on in less than two minutes. As soon as she got back, I got up and ran back and put a suit on as well.
“LAURA, you put on the full thermals, yes?”
“Yea, I did.”
I finished pulling my stuff on.
“Good, cut to minus 50° and get your helmet on.” I pulled the suit tight and pulled on a helmet. We could now go down to -250° comfortably. Maybe another 50° below that, uncomfortably. I crawled back into the pilots seat, and set the temperature for -200°, and the ship slowly started getting colder. Gradually, but noticeably. Heating was an issue. The surface should read about the same as ambient outside temperatures, but they might have some kind of device that could see through the skin, who knows. At any rate it didn’t seem like the time to take chances.
The ships left warp drive close to the planet. Many times closer than a human ship would have dared. They simply materialized into normal space, none of the colored light show that normally accompanied such an event.
“I'm really glad we got here first, and you know where to hide a ship here.” And she looked at me. She was scared.
“Yea. Me too. Lucky us.”
“Yea, lucky us. Do you think we can put up a scope?”
“Hard to say. It's not much of a way up, those ridges barely rise above the top of the ship. Might even be able to see something just raising a scope under the rock shelf. We looked at each other, and I started entering the commands. A scope poked up on the left side of the ship, under the overhang. I raised it five meters, and adjusted the video to appear on our screens. We could see the Volga pretty clearly on the monitors, about 1 km away, on the far side of the ridge, nestled next to another rock overhang. Problem was, the Volga was at least ten times our size, no where near as maneuverable in tight spaces, and much harder to hide. The three unknown ships headed low over the planet. They were on a course over our position, and were moving slowly, across the surface. Probably looking for something. We turned the scope out towards the horizon. The ships were clearly leaving an energy trail across the planet.
We watched the feed from the scanner. Nothing outside. The ships, the dots on the monitor were nearing the area quickly. We sat quietly, and waited. They appeared to be nearing the area where they might be visible to us or the Volga, although we couldn't see them with the naked eye, too far above the planet. If we were outside we could have seen their exhaust trail, assuming they left one. The quickly moved over our position. The Volga was clearing scanning the area, the radar waves showed on the monitors. They weren't in a position to go dark anyway, they were out on the plain, and fully exposed. The three ships hovered over our general position, and we waited.
Then the Volga disappeared right off the surface of the planet. No explosion. No colored lights. Nothing at all. It just vanished into thin air.
“Where did it go?”
“I was going to ask you that, Alex. Where is it?”
“I don’t know.” I panned the scope left and right. Nothing. No Volga.
“Alex, it just disappeared. That isn’t possible... Is it?”
“It just did. Possible or not, it just did.”
We were still in shock from the disappearance of the Volga, when the next surprise occurred. Just as suddenly as they had appeared, the three ships disappeared as well. There was no warning, a short series of transmissions, and then they were gone. Warped directly out of the planets gravitational field, and atmosphere. We were without words.
“They're gone.”
“It looks like it.” I answered.
“What was that about. They weren’t here more than ten minutes. Maybe less. They fly in, find the Volga, destroy it, and leave? What is going on?”
“I have no idea. But we need to get out of here, and we need to do it at the right time. We have to tell Jochim and space command, and they will have to decide what happens next. We just made some kind of contact with something that isn’t like anything I know of in the known universe, and it's a threat to us. At least it appears that way. And the commission is going to react.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Wait until its clear to leave, and then scram for Kroatzys Station, the nearest star outpost. Report, and then see what happens next. Oh and load up as much fuel and supplies as this thing will carry. We need to load up to the limit.”
“So how long do we wait before we leave the area?” She asked.
“A while I think. At least twelve hours. I want to get out of here, but I don’t want to warp out of here right after them. They could have some kind of radar and transmitter around here, and if we have a bit of a head start, well, it can't hurt. They have faster ships, true, but with enough course changes in hyperspace it would still be hard to find us. Also that would give us enough time to get a transmission off to somewhere and at least warn people of whats coming. Even if... Even if they did catch up with us.”
She looked at me. And she suddenly looked older. “Yea, it sounds like a reasonable plan. So... What do we do for twelve hours?”
“As little as possible I think. Rest. We are going to have to lay low until we leave, as little as possible.”
“How long are we going to sit in these suits, in this cold?”
“Dunno. Good question. Since we are going to sit here for a while, I guess we turn the heat back on. Or keep the helmets on and go on full life support.” Before she said anything I made some adjustments in the programs, and the heat came back on. It would take thirty minutes at least to come back up to a comfortable temperature.
“And so here we sit.”
“That we do little one.”
We dozed off in the recliners, and woke up an hour later. We took off the suits but decided to keep them in arms reach, and just loosen the thermal undergarments. We left the temp a little chilly by normal standards to compensate. We didn’t talk. There wasn’t anything right now to talk about. She busied herself in the language material she had last got from the Volga, and I sat and went through scans and logs of the events of earlier in the day. And we both dozed off. Funny how stress makes you sleepy. Instant reaction to highly life threatening events, you feel tired, if it's not right in your face. Then you get the big Adrenalin rush. Afterwords you just want to sleep.
Finally twelve hours had passed. We brought the rest of the ships systems back on line, slowly, carefully, and I loaded a course into the nav software, one that would be tough to follow and slow them down considerably.
“So Laura, are you ready? I think it's time we got out of here.”
“Yea I'm ready, let me strap in.”
She strapped herself in and I cut in the nav program. We blasted straight off the surface, accelerating hard as we pulled away. Within two minutes we were in space, and as soon as we broke free of the thin atmosphere and gravitational pull, the nav software took the ship to warp drive. We looked at each other.
“I don’t think I like space as much anymore.” She said.
“I don’t know what to think.”
The Trip Back to Kroatzys' Station