Enigma Ship - J. Steven York [25]
Gold crossed his arms over his chest. “Spit it out, Stevens.”
“During the first burst, we observed some minor disruption of the holographic matrix. Given that, and our success with the modified magnetic probe, it’s just possible I could come up with a special torpedo to disrupt at least their outer holograms. It might be only be temporary, twenty minutes or so while the fields regenerate, but it would give us a look at what we’re dealing with. It might let us get a direct comm signal in, or beam our people out.”
“How long?”
Stevens punched at the screen of his padd. “We’ll need to run some more analysis on the data. More scans next time we pulse Enigma. Design and fabricate the weapon. Maybe thirty hours.”
“Make it twenty,” said Gold.
* * *
Duffy looked down at the surf sloshing around the boots of his space suit. “I am definitely overdressed, for this beach.”
He, Gomez, and P8 Blue were standing on a sandy coastline under a sunny, pink sky. Pattie—smaller, lower, and generally more vulnerable to the waves—scuttled up the sandy slope away from the water. Thirty meters beyond, a cliff made of dark, volcanic rock reared up into the sky.
Gomez looked at him. “Any idea how we got here?”
“Felt like a transporter to me.”
“Where,” asked Pattie, “do you think we are?”
“Still inside Enigma, I’d say.” Duffy took out the magnetic probe and looked around for something to test it on. He could have simply tried it on the sand, but the environmental suit made it difficult to bend that far.
Ten meters to his right, a black outcropping of rock the size of a shuttlecraft rose up out of the sand. He trudged over, activated the probe, and shoved it against the outcropping.
To his surprise, the probe didn’t penetrate, but neither was the surface entirely solid. Instead, it gave slightly, like wet leather.
There was a rumble, almost subsonic, so deep and loud Duffy felt it in his ribcage as much as he heard it. “Ouch,” said the universal translator, in the very generic voice it reserved for the most extremely alien of languages.
A few meters to his left, a flipper the size of a man lifted out of the sand, traversed a five meter arc, and dug into the sand. With a grunt, the “outcropping” laboriously pulled itself a few meters farther up the beach.
Duffy staggered back, then turned and ran from the behemoth. He managed ten meters or so in the clumsy environmental suit before looking back.
The thing wasn’t chasing him. It labored to move on land, and he could have kept ahead of it at a slow stroll. “Did that turtle just talk?”
“Do not mock me, small visitor,” said the behemoth. “No turtle am I. Rogendera Godo-click, I am, far-traveler, brave adventurer, home from the stars after many seasons’ travels. Home to lay her eggs in familiar sand, and tell her children tales of distant worlds. Home to stay am I.”
Gomez stepped closer. “You’re a space traveler?”
“I was, as you must be. Strange is your form and speech. Never your like have I seen before, not in all the travels, mine.”
“We’re space travelers,” said Duffy, “but we’re a little lost.” He considered a moment. Whatever this thing was, it was real, and it didn’t seem to know it was on a ship. “In your travels, did you at some time collide with some unseen object?”
“This happened, on the four-hundred-and-sixth day of the twentieth season of our voyage through the black ocean. We were trapped for a time, but we escaped and after many adventures on the black ocean, returned here, to these fine sands.”
“Kieran,” said Gomez, “maybe we shouldn’t talk about this with the ‘locals’ till we know more.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”
“Friends,” said Pattie, “we are not alone.”
They turned to see a bright ball of light emerge from the cliff face. As it approached, it dimmed and changed form, into something more humanoid this time.
The being was shorter than Duffy, with caramel-colored skin, its head owl-like and topped with short brown feathers. The eyes were