Cloneborne 005 – There’s Something On The Hull

“Dropping from quantum jump in one minute,” the watch officer announced over the ship PA. “All hands, secure to drop from quantum jump. All hands, secure to drop from quantum jump.”

Captain Emmanuel Trout—Manny among friends—secured himself at his chair, heart pounding out of learned habit. During the war against the shinkies, dropping from q-jump had even odds of seeing their ship arriving near—by astronomical standards, at least—a pitched battle, especially during the latter parts. Even if they’ve officially been at peace for three years now, it was a habit that no one seemed to wish to break, especially given the recent outbreak in pirate activity using salvaged military equipment from both sides. Still, given how they were more than a hundred lightyears beyond the furthest frontier settlement—the official ones that the navy knew about, at least—it was unlikely there were any of those all the way out here.

Of course, thinking that was exactly the kind of thing that would leave a ship vulnerable to being ambushed, so everyone was ready to come out within scanning range of a shinky battle group, if only to maintain discipline. Still, Trout had to admit that he was glad that this past month had been a peaceful deployment. Just hopping from star to star at FTL, dropping out of jump to reorient themselves, then jumping back up to supralight once they were pointed at the next star on their course.

As the countdown neared zero, Trout reached up and pinched his nose. He wasn’t the only one.

“Dropping from quantum jump,” the watch officer announced.

Everything was flame.

Trout endured the millisecond that seemed to stretch on for far longer than it should with the stoicism of a man who’d done it all before, and felt the moment when the ship went back to normal again. Inhaling through his mouth, he breathed out through his nose so he wouldn’t have to smell the phantom sensation of burning human flesh. In his years in the navy, he’d asked everyone he thought might know what it was about, and the best answer he’d ever gotten had been an engineer who’d pointed at that given they were going faster than light, he was lucky the flesh that was burning wasn’t his own.

All around the bridge, the large screens that were part of the bridge’s walls showed the view from the cameras studded around the ship’s conning tower on the starboard half, providing the illusion they were looking out onto space directly rather than being buried deep within the ship, behind the thickest part of the armorbelt. It was one of six identical bridges in the ship, built for both redundancy and to obfuscate where the actual bridge was in wartime.

“System confirmed, sir,” the navigator called out. “We’ve arrived at GRN-2814 at 43 light minutes from the system primary. Scanning for the system’s planets now.”

“Powering down quantum drive,” the helmsman announced. “Switching reactor power to Alcubierre drive.”

The bridge continued on as departments reported in and people checked instruments. Normally, he’d leave something as routine as coming out of jump to the watch officer as he did paperwork in his office, but… well, the young Cadet Trout in him who’d joined the navy to see the universe was curious to see what a literal ‘dark planet’ was like. While it wasn’t a perfect black body, that fact that the atmosphere seemed to completely absorb visible light had been of interest to those in the navy, who wanted more accurate QTG readings and if possible a sample of whatever was causing the phenomenon.

“Black Pearl located outside of the original estimated range,” the navigator announced. “Black Pearl is within the recommended search area.” The survey drones apparently had a consistent bug when it came to them predicting the orbits of planets, and Dr Gonzales had helpfully advised them on how to correct for it. “Calculating trajectory.”

“Setting course, sir,” the helmsman. “Activating Alcubierre drive.”

The A-drive was a lot smoother than a Q-jump, and quite happily didn’t result in someone smelling burning flesh. The pajhadin had only shared the system they used when they’d joined the alliance against the shinkies, along with a bunch of other technologies they’d held close. It allowed for maneuvering in FTL, unlike the Q-jump, which could only go in a straight line and needed to be initiated within the sphere of a system’s heliopause. However, the latter was more energy efficient when it came to consuming QEC, especially since a ship continued accelerating to higher and higher multiples of the speed of light the longer it was in jump. Combining both had allowed humanity and its allies to finally be able to match the shinkies’ ships in maneuvering within a system. They could have …

Shaking off the sour memories, Trout allowed himself a moment to take in the view on the screens. The stars at the front of the venture were turning blue, and a few points of light were visibly moving. Because they were moving at sublight speeds, the stars directly behind them were only turning read instead of disappearing entirely. Besides the signs of movement, there was nothing to see, so Trout went back to the paperwork on his tablet. There were always disciplinary reports, especially since this was a ship of more than ten thousand people…

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“Planet in sight, sir.”

It took Trout a second to look up as he signed off on the report about the efficiency of the Venture’s lateral lanes, and how many people had tried driving the cargo carts into them. There was nothing on the front screen yet, but a few taps on the control panel of his chair changed the feed, switching the view of the conning tower with the long-range forward camera. They were coming on the planet at an angle, with the system’s primary at their ten-o’clock. Half of the planet should have been lit up by daylight, just like one of the two moons in sight orbiting it. Instead, the entire planet was a black disk against the stars—

“Sir,” one of the lookout operators called out, a tone of urgency in his voice. It immediately drew the attention of both Trout and the watch officer, Commander Robertson. “We’re picking up the QTG reading of a Hegemony drive. It’s coming from the planet.”

“Can you confirm?” Robertson demanded as Trout straightened and put away his tablet as he began activating the screens built around his chair.

“No, sir. We’re not in a good position to triangulate the reading, but it’s constant. The QTG reading isn’t dropping.”

Trout frowned at that. When Hegemony ships engaged their version of a quantum drive, there was a detectable quantum burst, and then the ship vanished as it moved faster than light. While it still released some quantum energy, it was only possible to track where it had been, not where it currently was. “It’s stationary?” Trout asked, just to be sure.

“As near as the instruments can tell, Captain. Preparing to launch scanning probes to begin triangulating.”

Trout pursed his lips, then put away his tablet. While false positives weren’t unknown, this was the navy. If the universe had a way to screw them, it would. On the other hand, given that the analysts had said that there was some kind of quantum phenomenon going on with the planet’s atmosphere, the chances of a false positive were likely a bit higher than normal, especially since it wasn’t acting as a Hegemony ship’s drive should. “I see. Carry on.”

He exchanged looks with the watch officer and pulled out his tablet again, letting him know he was still in charge.

“Confirm whether it’s an actual drive or just an anomaly,” the watch officer ordered.

“Aye, sir.”

“Sir!” someone else suddenly cried. “I have eyes on movement on the hull! Eyes on movement on the hull!”

That had people looking up, although blessedly many aborted the gesture to turn back to their own display and began scanning the immediate vicinity of the ship. Trout wasn’t one of those people, instinctively standing up from his chair to find the spacer who had called out. They were one of the quartermasters who had been assisting the navigator, their hand upraised to point at the starboard screen.

A figure stood on the hull of the ship in view of the conning tower’s camera, standing out against the almost flat plane of the outer hull armor. Standing on two legs—which tentatively ruled out them being a shinky, although it was possible they were one of the shinkies’ slave races—they wore a black and yellow spacesuit that bore no resemblance to any of the navy’s light suit variants as they walked incongruously across the ship’s armor, carrying some kind of large case or container in one hand. There was something strange about their stride that bothered Trout, even as he heard Robertson contacting the ship’s MA contingent, informing them there was someone on the hull who was to be detained. The intruder turned their head as they looked around them, the sunlight glinting on the gold tint of their visor and the two triangular protrusions on top of their helmet that made Trout think of cat ears, scanning the hull like a lost tourist looking for landmarks.

Even as the bridge crew watched, the figure finally seemed to notice the conning tower and kicked off the ground. Instead of the simply rocketing up into space, the figure skimmed over the hull, propelled by some unseen thruster system as they moved closer to the camera. They grew larger on the screen and gently touched down on the hull again, their magnetic boots immediately catching on the steel alloy. For a moment, the illusion that the screens were windows was broken as the figure reach out their appendage, which grew to gigantic distended proportions as it reached out towards the camera and momentarily eclipsed the screen before the figure stepped back.  

The figure knelt down and solidly placed the large container they were carrying against the hull, where it stayed in place. Then they reached behind them and detached a rectangular panel from their back. They held it up to the camera, showing that the panel was covered in a multitude of black dots and boxes, though on a closer inspection each black dot was recessed into a one of the nine boxes of a three-by-three grid inside a rectangle. The figure raised their other hand and seemed to point to the upper left corner of the panel, which showed a rectangle with grid that contained two dots. The finger shifted to the right, pointing at a rectangle with three dots on the grid. Then towards a rectangle with five dots. Then a rectangle containing a grid with seven dots. Then a rectangle with a pair of grids side by side, each with a single dot. A rectangle with pair of grids with a single dot on the first grid and three dots on the second…

“What are they doing?” Trout asked, bemused.

He hadn’t been expecting an answer, but he got one in any case. “Sir, I think those are prime numbers,” one of the other lookout operators—a blue-skinned rakido spacer whose muscles gave the impression there were as wide as they were tall—said. “Each grid is a digit, and the number of dots show which digit. They seem to be using base ten. See, that’s 23, 29, 31…”

“Prime numbers?” Robertson asked sharply. “Why prime numbers, spacer?”

“… some old first contact protocols are to send and look for signals that contain prime numbers, sir. A sequence of prime numbers would convey to an intelligent species that you’re also an intelligent species. Although theoretically, the prime numbers would be relayed as a series of signal pulses, not as pictogram numbers. Sir.”

The figure continued pointing at the rectangles of dots and grids.

On another screen of the bridge display, there was more movement on the deck as a squad MA’s is space armor came into view, drifting over the hull with controlled bursts of their thrusters. In armor, the differences of each species’ physiology was grossly exaggerated. The rakido looked almost as wide as it was tall in their armor, while the tall pajhadin seemed to have almost human proportions while wearing the armor, their tentacles armored and holding additional weapons. The changers and tiwada among them weren’t so much wearing suits as operating spherical heavily armed and armored assault vehicles.

The figure paused mid-gesture, their head turning to face towards the approaching MA squad, even though the latter should still be out of sight on the other side of the conning tower. They had some sort of sensor suite on them, then.

With an almost human-looking shrug, the figure stopped gesturing at the prime numbers on the panel they were holding and flipped it around to show the other side.

Trout stared and he wasn’t the only one. There was writing on the other side of the panel.

And it was in Latin letters. In English.

Greetings, Earthlings, it read. We come in peace. Take us to your leader, please. We come bearing treats.

…

If this was someone’s idea of a prank, there was going to be hell to pay.