Astronomicon: Behemoth

Chapter 41 - Healing

"Are you still blind?" chuckled Aron.

He was standing in the Control Room having not yet moved away from the hatch to the deck below. The command chair was still fully reclined, with Megan lying back in it with yet another cool-pad across her eyes.

"I can see fine," she snapped. "Santiago wants me to keep resting my eyes for a while longer. What's this about a mission to the cat hangar?"

"We don't know if we wiped them all out. Since their buggy has been removed from the corridor, it seems reasonable to assume that at least one of them is still around."

"Mo seemed convinced that they were all gone," she replied. "Anyway, they are not a priority right now. We need to get a proper water sample from the rain chamber first, Isa must finish cataloguing the crystal holograms and there are probably hundreds more rooms to explore along the corridor."

"Those are all important," he agreed. "But the cat people, if there are any left, are an immediate threat to our well-being."

"What can they do? All our expeditions are armed, the hangar airlock door is under twenty-four-hour surveillance and, if there are any left, there must be greatly reduced in number."

"Ekono thinks it's important we know for sure," he protested.

"Ekono is paranoid!"

"He's about the closest thing we've got to a military adviser," Aron replied, sounding angrier than he meant.

"Anyway, how are you getting on with the devices you brought back from the cat vessel?"

Aron was caught a little off guard by the sudden change of subject. "Not much to report, so far. I haven't had a lot of time to work on them. Margaux's had a look."

"What does she think of them?"

"About the same as me. We can get some lights to flash on one of them, but nothing seems to do anything. We're probably not pressing the right places," he chuckled.

"No weapons amongst them?"

"Two of them look like weapons. One appears to be completely dead, the other has some electrical activity inside but I can't work out how to make it work. Of course, it might be an almost flat battery that won't do anything until we work out how to recharge it."

"That's all you know?" Megan sounded disappointed.

"We think only one device belongs to the cat people. The others don't match the construction style or materials of the cat people from what little we know about them."

"You think it's stuff they've gathered from elsewhere on this ship?"

"Seems fair to assume," he replied, nodding slowly.

"Okay, well keep working on them. It might be worth another expedition to the cat hangar to recover the other devices you saw."

"We could do that tomorrow," he suggested.

"It's not that urgent," she replied. "We need to formulate a plan for sending a team through the teleport hoop again. We don't know for definite if that room is this vessel's control room, but I'm convinced that a major step towards a solution for our entire situation lies in that room."

"Both you and Walter said that the transfer process was painful."

"It was; excruciating," she replied surprisingly matter-of-factly.

"Might be hard to get volunteers," he chuckled.

"Santiago seemed confident that some sort of painkillers would do the trick."