Naya was five minutes overdue on her check-in, and Shonas was getting twitchy. She’d been the obvious one to send, of course – but even despite the inherent advantages, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the locals could still pose a problem.
And it wasn’t like her to be late.
Regulations said to wait ten minutes… then again, he’d never been one to strictly abide by regulations. Like letting her go out there without deploying surveillance, he thought to himself grimly. He’d wanted to deploy the insect drones, but she’d vetoed that – didn’t want to risk their detection. “Would undermine trust,” she’d said.
She was right, naturally: it was standard procedure for first contact proceedings – but this is hardly a by-the-book first contact! Should have done it anyway…
Really, if it hadn’t been for the incredibly unusual biological characteristics exhibited by most of the species on the planet – even among the sentient species – and her enthusiasm to investigate (“Do you know how incredibly rare a dimorphism like this is?!?” she’d gushed. “I’ve only read about this in textbooks – the theoretical material! No one’s even seen a case like this in over 300 years of exploration!”), he would have nixed the whole idea. No effective planetary government, no clean-energy tech, minimal presence in space – he ran through the evidence again in his head – and plenty of evidence of heavily militarized nation-states. Yes, there had been the signals welcoming potential aliens, and yes, there were the probes seeking to make contact (those were ancient, though, at least 40 years old), and the various (easily avoided) signal-detection receivers - but they seemed to be not the work of official governments, but rather small non-profits of little repute. But, they were an exploratory scientific survey mission… she’d insisted, and – as usual – he’d relented.
And now she was seven minutes overdue.
The hell with it – “Shonas to Yara. Check-in. Please acknowledge.”
Nothing.
“Shonas to Yara. I’m checking in, as per protocol. Please acknowledge.”
A faint noise came through his headset as he spoke the last word. He waited for more, but there was no follow-up. “Yara, I didn’t catch that, please repeat.” A beat, then a series of low noises. What the…? …oh, shit – subvocalization. …not good. He focused, repeating the noises to himself.
Distress signal.
“Yara, I read you. Hold on.” He swung his chair around to the tactical console. “Alright, real quick – are you OK?” Short noise. Yes. “Are you still at the rendezvous?” Long noise. No. “Okay – I’m activating your transponder; there’s a chance they’ll catch the signal, but I doubt it.” He toggled the controls.
“You’re reading 1250 meters, roughly… north-northwest, magnetically, from the rendezvous. They walked you there?” A ‘yes’ noise. “You’re being monitored – how many?” Four noises. “Could you… handle… them yourself, if you needed to?” A ‘no’. “Right, so… other threats, then.” He considered. “I’m coming in on my shuttle – now, I don’t want to hear it,” he rushed on, cutting off her sharp noise objecting to the plan. “The drones can’t read and react to a fluid situation, you know that. And we’re getting you out of there – that’s all there is to that. I’ll have it disguised as a native avian – it’s night, they won’t get a good enough look at it to see me. I’ll be there in ten.”
Shonas rushed out of the pilot chamber, stopping at his weapons locker to pick up a couple items and instructing the ship’s computer to stock the shuttle with the appropriate full emergency exfiltration kit. He stowed his little toys in his pockets, made his way to the bay and squeezed into his shuttle – a tight fit, but then, it was built for covert operations (he was the one with tactical training, after all) – programmed up an appropriate camo selection (a local raptor – a bird of prey wouldn’t be suspicious sitting in one place for a long period), checked to make sure the tools were onboard… and launched, already planning his strategy out in his mind: re-entry shouldn’t be hard, just have to simulate a meteorite trajectory… go dark, glide in; power up and activate the camo inside 200 meters. Should do a fly-by on her shuttle… (he ran a quick scan on its location) yep, good, geo-locked, they won’t be able to move it… find the building, ‘perch’ by an intake duct… and then I’m the man inside.
Fortunately – amazingly – it went even smoother than that: they only had two guards on her shuttle (waiting until after the interrogation, perhaps) – he tagged them both for later disposal – and there was an air duct actually jutting out from the building to land on, letting him cut directly into it from above. He lasered a hole and dropped in – it was cramped, but doable. “Okay, I’m here,” he told her. “I’ll have to recon, and then maybe chance a passive scan.” Even that whisper echoed a bit in the metal duct, so he activated a noise dampener before crawling & shuffling his way toward the closest outlet to where they were holding her.
A big surprise was waiting for him. “Ohhhh-kay, I’ve got a mechanical projectile weapon of some sort, clearly jury-rigged to a motion sensor. Did they tell you not to move?” A quick noise acknowledged that yes, they had. “Good thing – even this primitive kludge could do a lot of harm…” he muttered, running a quick scan of the ducts. “Annnnd I’m reading seven more of them in the other vents onto this room. Dispatching drones to disarm.” He released the machines to zip through the duct work, then turned his attention to the setup in front of him. Clearly a slap-dash job, set up specifically for them to capture and hold her. Easily handled… he thought, concentrating on the task, snip a wire… here; …and, jam the gun for good measure. The drones would follow the same procedure, and he set them to auto-recall once done. Still… damn cold-hearted – their own people are in there too. He checked the scanner again.
“Also reading six cameras, in various locations. Not seeing any manual surveillance other than the guards in the room, you agree?” Another quick ‘yes’ noise. “Hang tight, then, this’ll need the bugs.” A more advanced device than the drones, these would need to crawl out on the walls – flying through the air, the guards or the cameras might notice them. “I’m going to tag these guys while we’re waiting,” he commed, then cut off her apprehensive noise, “Non-lethals, knockout drugs only, I know – zero kill protocol when dealing with lesser-developed species whenever possible. Still, you’ve got to admit, they would have earned it.” He whistled. “Big bastards, though, aren’t they? It’ll take a lot to knock them out. Hard to see how they built these tiny vents…”
Shonas spent a long two minutes, still, silent, waiting for the bugs to reach the cameras. As they plugged into the feeds, he pulled out his reader to code a quick work-around. No physical memory on the device; hard-wired to… central computer bank. Connection to other storage media, or off-site uploads? No, fantastic. Just code them to pulse-wipe once we’re gone… “Setting up a repeating cycle of footage from the last minute... and… now.” He activated the sequence, then, “Guards down… now.” The four brutes collapsed.
“Oh, thank you…” came Yara’s voice. “I was really fucking tired of grunting.” She laughed, turning toward him (how did women always know? I guess it’s for the best… would be a lot of accidents otherwise…).
“Dispatching those overgrown lummoxes? My absolute pleasure.” He grinned. “Did you ever get a look at any of the women?”
“Oh, yes, there were three in the group of scientists they brought through – and one of the military leaders, too, so at least there’s that,” she said. Wait…, he thought, what’s that? “Absurdly tiny,” she continued, “I still don’t see how an intelligent species can function when the males are that much bigger…” She smiled, looking at him. …oh no… “Now, c’mere, Sho,” she purred, stepping forward, “and let me thank you prop-”
“FREEZE, YARA!” Shonas screamed.
Yara stiffened in place immediately – thank goodness for the strictness of galactonaut training! – even holding her leg up in mid-step.
“Move back. Slowly.” She eased back to her previous position, as Shonas flipped his view to infrared. “Clever big bastards…”
“What is it?”
“Infrared beams. Simple grid. Another motion sensor. Wired to…” – he switched to x-ray view – “explosives. Under the floor. Clever, bloodthirsty, big bastards… enough to take out the whole room, maybe even a chunk of the building.” He blanched. “Guard 3 missed tripping one with his head by about a decimeter when he fell over.” Shonas’ hands scrambled for the specialty drones in his suit.
Yara blinked, stunned. “…well, fuck.”
“It’s alright – I brought some communication drones. They’ve got reflective parts for non-line-of-sight tight-beam communication. I can use the mirrors to fool the detectors without disrupting the system.” While he talked, Shonas steered the drones into place.
“You’re not going to disarm-?”
“No time – they’re fully beneath the floor, and anyway… it’s a lot easier to blow up an explosive than stop it from blowing up.” He waved a hand and tried to sound sympathetic (without much success): “I know, they might set it off themselves when they notice you’re gone, or waking up, but… dammit, Ya, they’d’ve brought it on themselves, you’ve got to agree.” She was silent. “Anyway, you’re good to go now – step straight toward the door, say… ten meters.” Yara cautiously edged that way. “Okay, now… the door – well, I’m killing the alarm, but… that thing’s locked, with, it looks like, codes plus voiceprint and fingerprint recognition, it’ll-”
“You said you’re killing the alarm?”
“Yeah, I got it, but unlock-”
Yara grabbed the doors and wrenched them open.
Shonas closed his gaping mouth. “…yeah, okay, forgot you could do that.”
“Let’s move out,” Yara commanded. “Gather up the drones, get back to your shuttle and meet me at mine – it’s faster.”
“Already on it!” Shonas exclaimed, scrambling back toward his shuttle – he’d auto-recalled all the drones once she’d cleared the laser grid.
“The bugs – you remembered-?”
“Set to pulse-wipe their computers and disintegrate – they might get some metallic dust, but that’s it. I know the drill – zero footprint. Besides, definitely don’t want these people getting access to advanced tech.”
“Definitely—not,” she huffed. She’s running full-out… oh, shit, right. Shonas thumbed a control and tranked the guards by her shuttle. “Thanks – are you—in your—shuttle?”
“Boarding now,” he replied, hauling himself up. He checked a status screen. “Drones recalled. Start preflight, I’ll be there ASAP.” He undocked his shuttle from the vent and revved the engine.
“Acknowledged. 60 seconds to launch.” She was already running through the sequence.
He blasted in her direction; no sense in stealth now – if they hadn’t noticed her at full sprint, they sure as fuck wouldn’t notice his shuttle.
He docked in the nick of time – “I’m in, go!” – and felt the g-forces mount as her shuttle thrust up, towards orbit. He checked tactical systems – no radar traces, nothing inbound. A few minutes later, as they reached orbit, the artificial gravity kicked on; he unbuckled his harness, walked to his hatch to her section, opened it, and slid down to recline in his usual perch in her ear.
“Looks like we’re clear. Nothing tracking us.”
“Good. We’ll re-attach to the ship and hightail it out of here, first thing. I’ve had enough of this planet, scientific curiosity or no.”
“You saw them, though? The women were really…?”
“Yep. About 10% smaller. Completely different from the typical standard of 30 to 50 times larger that we’ve seen on every other known world. And it seemed to be planet-wide, though there were one or two species closer to normal.”
Shonas shook his head. “Just… strange. I can’t imagine how this planet… what was it called?”
“In the most widespread language, I believe they called it ‘Earth’.”