Doctor and Engineer

The door to the medbay slammed open, the space inside already cleared of staff as the grav-sled moved rapidly across the floor into the quarantine booth. As the seals on the area locked shut, Dustin glanced at his medic. Bleu was dressed for danger; despite her own confidence in her species’ ability to filter particulate she wasn’t taking any chances with the body or relic or whatever that was currently in front of her, and as such had donned a full vac-suit.

Moving carefully, the Queri ran a scanner over the entity; as she did so, three others including Dustin himself trained pulse carbines on the thing. While it looked dead, he was taking no chances with whatever this was especially with that pulsing signal in it’s chest. Rye had remained behind on the lunar surface and was leading a team to continue searching through the wreckage; in the aftermath of finding what could potentially be a member of the species that had been attacking planets, they’d split their work - Dustin back to the ship with the body, the bunny girl to see if she could find any terminals or other engineering points that would give them any clues to work with.

Alongside the archaeological work, there was also still the matter of communicating to the Lemth that their ancient stories of angry sky gods were probably true; Emely was in the process of figuring out how best to broach that subject, working alongside the entire uplift team via a conference call in Dustin’s ready room. The main focus of everyone’s thoughts now however was on what exactly the good doctor would find when she started probing the apparent corpse.

“Specimen is humanoid, approximately human sized without any clear detailing. No obvious pores or skin wrinkles remain on the outer surface. At present unclear if this is due to the subject wearing a suit or possessing a dermal layer akin to the Queri hyperdermis. Electromagnetic readings indicate the presence of an alternating wave on a deeper level consistent with heart functions in species with distinct organs.” Bleu’s voice was clinical and precise as the slime woman ran her scanner down the body.

Reaching the creature’s pelvis, she continued. “No indications of either asexual or sexual reproductive capabilities on the body so far; precision scanning indicates partial degradation of the external layers on the lower limbs. Initial hypothesis is that this is due to impact shock when the chamber the subject was discovered in impacted the moon.” Pausing, Bleu adjusted her scanner slightly and clicked her tongue. “Hand scanner radio-imaging unable to locate any internal structures. I will switch to medbay scanning.”

Clipping the scanner back into it’s holster, the medic walked over to the quarantine airlock and stepped through it, beckoning the others to follow. Once everyone present had left the chamber with their vac-suits hanging on the rack in the airlock, Bleu activated a remote terminal. Inside the chamber, long arms descended from the roof of the bay and began to move slowly up the entity’s form. “Continuing report. Medbay radio-imaging providing additional information. External layer appears to consist of compacted silicates consistent with both suit and hyperdermis theories. Internally… scans are showing atrophied cellular pathways, although the exact makeup remains unclear. Clear signs of shock damage in the lower limbs with fractured vein-like structures which supports the impact damage hypothesis.”

Dustin watched, fascinated, as the doctor worked to carefully catalogue all her findings while the probes moved up to the lower torso. Bleu adjusted the controls once more at that point and the arms slid upwards over where the heart would be, rotating as they did so to get a clearer scan - causing the doctor to let out a low whistle. Breaking her professional reporting tone, she interrupted her logging to start to talk directly to Dustin. “Captain, it might be an idea to recall the chief engineer…” she began, but before she could explain why she wanted Rye to return, there was a creaking sound from inside the chamber and Sola’s alarm began to blare.

“Warning, attempted Quarantine breach detected.” The AI’s voice was clear - and in that moment utterly terrifying; Dustin’s eyes snapped back from the medic to the window into the chamber, and he gasped. Inside, the strange body had exploded outwards, spikes of black matter projecting from the grav-sled like the spines of an anemone. “Bleu…” he began, but before the doctor could answer the spikes retracted violently; the contents of the room being thrown around like so many toys. No, that wasn’t quite right; while most had retracted, one spine remained extended it’s tip embedded in a hole punched cleanly into the arm that had held one of the radio-imaging scanners.

As he turned to the doctor for answers, Dustin’s communicator chirped. “Captain? It’s engineering - chief engineer Rye ordered us to report anything odd to you immediately.” Wincing, Dustin acknowledged the message and asked what was going on as he did have a situation that he was currently dealing with; whichever crewman it was that had called him did not have good news. “Reactor four’s pushing max output, sir. That shouldn’t happen without some of the extra systems being deployed. I’ve tracked the grid, and it looks like it’s all being pulled towards…” Dustin didn’t need to hear the last word and interrupted the man on the other end, gazing at Bleu as he did so. “It’s being drained into Medbay, right?”

About fifteen minutes later, the chief engineer strode into the medbay. Rye had taken one look at the logs and the reports from her team when she arrived back on board and now shook her head in response to Dustin suggesting they kill the power. “It’s sucking directly from a main grid node. Medbay’s designed to never lose power if possible; here and life support have more lines in than anywhere else on the ship. I shoulda remembered that and made ya look at the spooky thing in a cargo pod or something, sorry Dusty. Only way we could kill the power now would be to shutdown all the reactors, and that’d leave us with no juice for anything.”

Bleu was still observing the entity through the window, although she had now been joined by Yril’k and a squad made up of the best of the security team, all in full combat gear. It was unknown if this thing was hostile, but as it was currently sucking down enough power to fly a starship, they weren’t taking any chances.

Getting the medic’s attention, Dustin asked “What do you think it’s doing?”, gesturing towards where the creature was leeching off of his ship as he did so. His two lovers glanced at one another and shrugged. “Feeding?” They both said as one, causing Dustin to wince. Rye sighed at his reaction and scratched behind her long ears. “Ya wanna explain this one, bubbles? Ya probably got a better handle on it than me.”

In response, Bleu gave a noncommittal sigh and waved towards the quarantine bay. “It’s pulling a lot of power; my scans show no clear signs of life beyond that, but it reacted to radiation. My best hypothesis right now is that it’s either a silicate life-form or an artificial one based on what data I was able to get before it started eating the equipment. That would match the behaviour we’ve seen - it’s not had anything to live on for thousands of years, so shut down all but an emergency restart routine.”

Rye chimed in at that point. “Which is consistent with about ninety percent of known synthetics and a large chunk of silicates. Given the speed of it’s movement I’m betting on the former; also, looking at those cross-sections Bleu was able to get, it might sound insane but I reckon we’re dealing with a cellular collective here.” Dustin looked blankly at the pair of them; the engineer sighed. “In simple terms? It’s a robot, but built like Bleu is - out of lots of little robots working together, rather than one big one.”

The medic wrinkled her nose at the implication that she was similar to their guest, but nodded. “Rather a rude comparison, but not entirely inaccurate. Nanite-based life has been hypothesized to be possible before, but the required engineering is not something that any species has ever pursued; the potential risks outweighed the benefits for even the most technologically minded of races. If that is the case, the patient here would not be just an entity in need of a doctor, but one that would also need an engineer.”

Glancing back into the room after the women had explained things, Dustin blinked. “Is it me, or does it look more… alive?” All eyes turned; sure enough, the body did look more alive somehow - it took a moment or two for Dustin to recognize why. “It’s getting detail; look at the hands - they almost look like they have fingers now.” He said, half-talking to himself.

As he spoke, he realized that Rye had reacted to the change in the creature by scrabbling for her tablet and tapping frantically at it. Seeing her start to move, he called out “What are you doing?” before dashing after her as she darted for the airlock, reaching the bunny girl right as she pulled the outer door open. Grabbing the woman by the arm, Dustin spun her around. “Are you nuts? You can’t go in there right now!” he panted; the effort of holding the powerful bunny girl in place draining his strength.

The Rabyth woman shook him off. “Need to, Dusty. That thing’s gonna wake up, right? Well, when it does it’s gonna be lacking in about a thousand years of history, and if it doesn’t find some I bet it’ll go for the nearest computer. I want that to be this tablet, not the ship’s AI core.” Shocked by her words, Dustin relaxed his grip; Rye pulled free without any noticeable effort, turned, and bolted through the airlock.

Suited up mere moments later, the bunny girl cautiously opened the inner door a hairline crack. Then, with the utmost care she extended it a little further, just far enough to push the tablet and the hand holding it through before sending the device skimming towards the body on the sled with a snap of her wrist. Retracting her hand rapidly and slamming the door behind her, the Rabyth then moved as fast as possible to re-join the others waiting outside.

Inside the room, a tendril of inky material had slid out of the body as the tablet moved past, grabbing it out of the air. Already, smaller tendrils crawled over the face of the device - before it’s screen began to suddenly shift rapidly, images and text flickering past at a speed Dustin couldn’t follow. At the same time, the lights in the medbay began to flicker and dim - before with a sudden click, everything inside the quarantine went dark. Staring into the blackness, Dustin barely heard Rye’s words as fear rose up his spine. “The drain must have tripped the local breakers. Systems should switch to the alternative line and get the lights back on in a moment…”