Entity [ONC 2024]

4

Porter felt glad of the heating filaments threaded throughout the environment suit she wore, but the helmet felt bulky and oppressive. She had to turn her entire upper body to see anything and, what she saw required all her attention. For the rest of her days, she would not forget one second of this. Not one detail. She stood in an alien ship. A ship that, to her surprise, did not look too dissimilar to an Earth vessel, if on a larger scale.

The light atop her helmet scoured across metal surfaces covered with ice. As far as she could tell, the entire ship had become as frozen as the icy asteroid it had crashed upon. Thick and almost clear, the ice held shapes and lines according to the surface it coated. Metal walls and bulkheads, doors and floors, everything had a glistening sheen to it, but only as the beam of light caressed across each surface. Once the light passed away, the ice turned as black as night and far more chilling.

Ahead, the captain, due to the lack of gravity, made slow progress along a corridor twice as wide as the passageways upon their own ship, his own light sweeping from side-to-side, casting shadows that loomed over Porter as she followed in near silence. The others had taken a different direction, heading deeper into the vessel, toward what they had all assumed was the stern. She and the captain searched forward, looking for some kind of command area.

"This is incredible." A slight click and a pause heralded the voice of Finnegan over the headset. His voice had started to crackle with interference, as Chen's had. "It's almost as though these ... people? These aliens followed a parallel evolution to us. Though, obviously, they have greatly surpassed our level of technology."

A hiss followed the silence as Finnegan kept his remaining thoughts to himself. Porter couldn't see how he could assume anything at this point. No matter where she looked, she couldn't see any obvious signs that could indicate what kind of being had created this ship. Every so often, she and the captain would pass a door, with more of the strange form of writing beside it, detailing what, she couldn't imagine. She looked inside each door, but could only see ice and vague structures. As they were obviously not the bridge, or command centre, the captain moved on.

At one point, the corridor began to curve, leading to a junction, and the captain paused, his head and the light on top turning this way and that. They had no way of knowing which way to go other than instinct. Here, they stood at the outer edge of the vessel, close to the hull. One way headed further toward the centre, the other trailed away and appeared to come to a dead-end, though Porter couldn't say for certain unless they checked that way out.

"Our ships tend to centralise their command decks. At the head of the ship, but contained for protection." A shadow of his arm pointed one way. "I doubt they'd have theirs near the hull. Stay close."

Decision made, they turned, taking the direction deeper into the structure. Even here, so far from the open airlock, the ice had crept in and covered everything. But, here, some things looked different. Containers of some kind littered the hallway, causing Porter and the captain to forge a weaving path between them. Each container, encrusted with ice, gave no indication of what it held, the alien writing and symbols indistinct through the coating. Porter stopped at one, seeing a slight crack and reached out to see if she could widen it.

"We're seeing damage." Mats' voice caused Porter's heart to skip a beat, recoiling from the container. A click, then a pause, and Mats continued. "Conduits in the wall ripped out. No indication of what the conduits are for. Too much ice and damage to say."

"Proceed with caution." The captain turned toward Porter, the light momentarily blinding her before he lowered his head to the container before her. "Don't touch anything. Not yet. We don't know anything about this place. You're doing fine."