SIREN

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Captain Maximova walked to where The Conductor had stood and crossed her arms. She tilted her chin and squinted at the screen, which was now a flurry of colour and letters. She released one of her hands and probed the monitor with a finger. The screen ignored her. 'Hoshi, how did you make this thing respond?'

'I don't know, Captain,' Hoshi grimaced, 'when I did it before, I just guessed. It's not human technology. I don't know what to do.'

'But you made it work. It reacted to you. How did you do that?'

'Hoshi,' Sam tugged at her clothes, 'you have to do something.'

'I could look at the UI,' I said. 'I could try to work out how to control it.' In truth, it would take hours to decipher The Conductor's language, and we obviously didn't have that much time. We were on a ship with no pilot, heading straight for a crash landing on our own planet.

'Actually, Captain, I have a theory.' Jaq stepped forward with her eyes glistening. 'I believe The Conductor allowed for her touch, since he liked her so much.'

Doctor White was crouched by the alien body, using a pen to poke a strip of exposed cartilage. 'This little bugger has got a fascinating muscular system. Look at all these things here! I don't even know what they are!'

'Robbie, darling, if you could focus for a second...' Captain Maximova grunted with her teeth clamped together. 'Do you think you could cut off The Conductor's hand?'

'Why would I ruin a perfect specimen like this to do something stupid like that?'

'Doc,' Sam sneered, 'it's got no head. How perfect can it be?'

'There's no need to keep cutting bits off!'

'Focus!' The Captain screamed, 'can you cut off its hand or not, yes or no?'

Doctor White picked up The Conductor's limp arm and waved it. 'I don't know what's under his skin. We could expose ourselves to something horrible. Besides, this thing had a mouth in the palm, right? What if we exposed the digestive tract? What if there's acid in there? Wow, just look at this spinal column... So thick... I wonder if the brain receives more--?'

'Useless,' Captain Maximova groaned. 'Hoshi, what if you tried playing with the screen again? You can make something work, can't you?'

'I can't!' Hoshi stamped her feet, 'I don't know how I did it! All I did was put my hand on the computer like this,' she slammed her palm down, 'and then the—!'

A thousand different voices poured from unseen speakers and said a multitude of phrases in various languages. Some asked for identification, others proposed threats and the possibility of immediate destruction.

I felt something tap my shoulder.

'Tell me what's going on,' ordered the Captain.

'I...' I did my best to focus and hear what they were saying. I watched The Conductor's blood trickle along the ground, and used the running fluid as an anchor for my thoughts. I entered a trace state and did my best to flush out any distractions. I followed one voice. Male. Old. Stuttering yet determined. 'It's Earth!' I said. My eyes swished from left to right. 'It's the people down below! They think we're The Conductor and this is an incursion! There's... Oh no!'

Captain Maximova's stopped. 'What is it?'

I gulped. Everything felt hot. 'They're going to attack if we don't do anything! They've got so much armour down there, Captain, we're going to be blown to pieces!'

Sam let out a huge sigh and put his hands in the air. 'That's wonderful, isn't it? We survive all this and then we fall at the last hurdle. Shot in the head right outside our front door!'

'Captain,' Doctor White reached for her shoulder, 'maybe we should try to evacuate.'

She slapped his hand away. 'How would you suggest we do that? By piloting one of those things in the hangar? How're we going to get out of the gravity well? Even if we do that, that's not going to stop those idiots on the ground from shooting at us! We have no way to contact them. We can't even radio for help!'

'I could—?' Jaq started, but she was shut up by the Captain's scream.

'Do what, Jaq? Somehow understand alien technology?'

'I'm just trying to help, Captain...'

A colossal shockwave tore through the ship and threw everyone to the deck. My eyeballs rumbled and my teeth chattered as everything around me rattled. My skull struck the floor over and over and my spine bent in half. The voices, the sound of stressed metal, The Conductor's remains sliding away from me, the sight of my crewmembers tumbling and writhing around...

And then it stopped. Everything stayed still.

I led on the ground, panting and assessing my wounds. My left knee felt like it'd been hit with a hammer, and I was sure I was bleeding from my head. I didn't want to move. I never wanted to get up. I wanted to stay there and let someone else deal with the situation. I wanted to instantly vanish from that spot and never come back.

I heard Sam's voice croak. 'What... What just happened?'

'I think we landed,' Jaq replied, looking around. 'I don't know what we landed on, though.'

'Is anyone hurt?' Doctor White asked as he inspected his suit.

A purple globe sprouted where the image of Tanegashima Island had once been. It flickered and then rotated on the spot. Smudges of light blue and white emblazoned the violet orb.

'Is that what I think it is?' I said, rolling onto my front. Adrenaline was still swirling round in my system, making every breath shallow and quick.

Only one of us was left standing, and she still had her hand fixed on the podium. 'It's a planet,' Hoshi told us.

'The Conductor's planet?' Captain Maximova said, rubbing her wrist.

Hoshi removed her fingers and stumbled backwards. 'I believe so, Captain.'

I heaved my chest upwards and ambled over to Hoshi. I spread my arms over the podium and leaned against the pillar. I saw a round purple icon dominating the top half of the screen whilst a smaller blue dot dwelled at the bottom. A stream of bright yellow glyphs darted from one circle to the other. 'Captain, it's... I think the ship is sending a message.'

'What does it say? Who's receiving it?'

I blinked and licked my lips. 'I don't know.'

END