BSE Chapter 4-11

The STO Naval transport had stopped far from Eden’s End as Vanguard approached. Until this moment, the Talon was the largest ship Alexander had ever seen. The Talon was ever so slightly larger than Harlow’s dreadnaught. This transport made them both look small in comparison. It had to be nearly two thousand feet long and wide enough around to fit the Vanguard inside its massive hold.

Once they were close enough, a few bots launched from Vanguard and landed on the massive vessel’s hull to do the scans.

It wasn’t strictly necessary, they were close enough to scan the ship, and other than a rather strangely shaped void inside the cargo hold, that took up less than a quarter of the space, the ship was free of hidden weapons or contraband.

“Who asked you to come out here?” Krieger asked the transport’s captain.

“The orders came straight from Admiral Fletcher. I was told to take a roundabout route to make my way here, however.”

“And what’s in the hold?” Krieger prompted.

The other captain shrugged. “I shouldn’t have to tell you this, Krieger. We both worked for Fletcher. I don’t ask what nonsense the Admiral wants me to move about, I only follow my orders. You gonna unload the ship so I can head back home or what?”

Krieger had a sour look on his face but he nodded. “Open it up and let's take a look inside.”

While Krieger was doing that, Alexander contacted one of the command ships and ordered it to fly out here. The bots would be able to act as tugs to pull whatever was inside the ship back if need be.

Alexander wasn’t worried about it being something dangerous, if it was, the Vanguard had more than enough firepower to take it and the Goliath transport out.

The massive doors slid open and stacked on top of each other off to the side of the ship, neatly out of the way. This was followed by the support beams which ran between the doors to add structural support.

Alexander was so focused on the engineering required to design such a large vessel that he didn’t immediately take notice of the cargo.

When he finally did, confusion was the first thing that came to mind. “Why is it wrapped up?”

Krieger had the same confused look on his face as they stared at the image of the gift-wrapped present inside the massive ship’s hold. It was obviously a ship of some sort or part of one at least, based on the rough outline, but somehow Fletcher had found enough material to not only cover the entire thing but also a massive red bow to tie it all off.

Alexander glanced over when Krieger sighed. “It’s a gift, from Fletcher.”

“That much I kind of gathered,” Alexander stated flatly. “Why go through the trouble?”

“He likely didn’t want anyone else to know what the gift entailed.”

Alexander simply shrugged and ordered the bots to tow the thing back to Eden’s End and try not to damage the wrapping. If it truly was to keep prying eyes away, he didn’t want the captain of the transport to get a glimpse.

Once it was free of the ship, the transport closed its cargo doors again and ponderously turned to head home. The captain wished them luck and that was that.

“Shouldn’t we have told him that Fletcher is dead?” Alexander asked.

“He’ll find out eventually, let's see what bio-waste my former boss just dumped on our lap first.”

“You think whatever this is, it’s trouble?”

“I think whatever this is, he gave it to you because he didn’t want the STO or the corporations getting ahold of it, so yes, it's trouble. How much, I can’t say.”

The robots' small ion drives took quite some time to tow the ship into orbit. Alexander really needed a dedicated tug or a fusion drive small enough for the bots. Now that he had considered it, a drive that small could also be fitted to missiles.

He put it on his list and focused as the bots removed the wrapping around their gift.

At first, he thought it was the remains of Epsilon’s Dawn. Looking at it evoked the same absence that looking at the Dawn, with its stealth armor, evoked. Alexander quickly determined that this was not the Dawn, though. For one, it had a much wider front profile, making him think it was akin to a cruiser or heavy cruiser in dimension instead of Dawn’s heavy destroyer design, except it wasn’t as long.

The reason for that was soon revealed as the back half of the wrapping came away, exposing the ragged edges where the ship had broken apart.

“It’s the alien ship!” Alexander stated in surprise. “Why would Fletcher hand this over to me?”

“No clue,” Krieger grunted. “Like I said, trouble. I suggest you build something to hide the remains of the ship so no random arrivals notice it.”

Alexander was already ahead of the man’s suggestion. He paused all of the current print jobs that he could and called up a simple storage unit large enough to fit the remains of the alien ship inside.

A swarm of bots soon surrounded the vessel and within an hour, the framework was in place for the storage unit. From there it simply took time as the bots zipped back and forth with paneling sections.

“I’m going to go over and check it out. Keep people away until the storage is complete and an airlock can be added.”

Krieger nodded.

By the time Alexander approached the building with the shuttle, the bots had managed to panel over a full tenth of the structure. There were no doors large enough to fit the ship through, only an airlock or where an airlock would eventually be.

The design of the structure was meant to hold cargo that could be transported by pallets, not for ships to come and go. He had decided on this design to both hide the purpose of this structure as well as to act as a legitimate storage facility. A few modifications would be required to hide the true contents but that wouldn’t be much of an issue.

He landed on a finished section of paneling, magnetizing the shuttle to the surface before stepping outside and making his way into the interior and past the quickly forming walls.

Alexander kicked off the surface and flipped, landing on the surface of the alien vessel. He had to scrabble not to float off as he quickly realized the outer hull was non-magnetic and didn’t have any convenient panel seams like the Dawn had.

His hand finally grasped something and if he had lungs, he would have breathed in relief.

When he glanced at what managed to stop him, he frowned. His hand was lying flat against the hull, it wasn’t gripping anything. He adjusted his holo projection to be as bright as possible and tried to see what connected him to the surface of the blindingly black ship.

It was hard to make out with the light-absorbing properties of the armor but it almost appeared like he was actually connected to the surface of the ship. He slowly pulled the hand away, careful not to push off. The material seemed to snap apart, but there was no damage and no change to the surface of his palm as he pulled away. He ran his hand across the surface, not pushing down, and it felt slightly textured.

He planted his feet and stood, then he walked forward. Each step seemed to click into place along the hull. He must have hit at an odd angle or something before, which is what prevented him from adhering to the hull.

Although adhering wasn’t the correct term. This was more of a mechanical connection, sort of like how geckos were able to climb surfaces by the tiny ridges on their feet that increased their friction.

One thing was for certain, this ship was designed with him or a robot exactly like him in mind.

Even without the obvious connection of his ability to stick to the hull, he felt it deep within. An almost-memory that he couldn’t quite grasp.

As he made his way to the broken aft, he spotted the signs of battle along the hull. Broken patches, holes punched through the armor, and carbon scoring that was easier to see than the utter blackness of the hull itself.

He flipped down into the broken decks of the ship and landed softer this time, his feet adhering the same way. Someone had glued metal strips to the decking at some point, likely so normal people could work on the ship without worrying about floating around.

Normally the lack of gravity shouldn’t be an issue, every human ship Alexander had seen had grab rails in case of artificial gravity loss but he quickly realized this this ship had none of that. He didn’t see the ubiquitous gravity plating either so did these aliens even rely on gravity in their ships?

Alexander thought back on how easily he manipulated stuff in zero gravity. He concluded that there was a good chance these unknown aliens relied entirely on robots such as himself or that this ship was wholly automated.

Considering the processing power required to operate a ship of this size, that meant a computer that vastly outperformed even the STO’s supercomputers.

He wondered if it had survived the attack that broke this ship.

Seeing no point in pondering what-ifs, he made his way deeper into the vessel, admiring the fact that he didn’t need to stoop through hatches. The large square openings were easily large enough to fit through, which wasn’t much of a surprise considering this ship was designed by the same race who had built his body.

Instead of wandering around aimlessly, Alexander followed the metal strips on the floor, and the signs glued to the walls with the STO Navy insignia on them along with ‘Classified: Top-Secret’ in bold red text as if the people who were authorized to get this far didn’t already know that.

The signs pointed to different sections of the ship. Alexander was deciding where to head when he spotted a sticky note on one of the signs. Curious, he walked over and read it.

Kane,

Sorry I dropped this on your lap, but I would rather see it returned to you than end up in the hands of the people who want me dead.

Scott Fletcher.

P.S. – All of the STO’s research and development into this ship are safely tucked away in the storage area. Just follow the signs and good luck.

He did just that and found a room packed full of equipment, data disks, research notes, you name it.

Some of the stuff was behind sealed doors marked with another note that the rooms were pressurized and environmentally controlled. He would need to wait until the building was complete and pressurized if he wished to see what those rooms contained.

For now, he set about cataloging what was inside the large room and seeing what could be moved dirtside to make it easier to work with.