Ghosts, chapter 1
"Well, Sarra, our supplemental feeding appears to have done the trick! I am glad you are looking so much healthier."
Lieutenant Hiro set the tweezers to one side and screwed the lid back onto the jar of dried mealworm crumbs, then stood back to admire the plant he was talking to.
Yes, it was really starting to look rather splendid, now – a circlet of trumpets all topped with rich pink leaftips. The sunlamps above it seemed to make it glow from within.
After encountering (and accidentally befriending) the monstrous giant sundew Zelda had sent to Earth, Hiro's curiosity had been piqued, and he'd adopted a Sarracenia, adding the carnivorous plant to Spacehawk's little private orbiting jungle. The stately North American trumpet pitcher hadn't particularly enjoyed being aboard, for a long time; a combination of artificial gravity, artificial light, the wrong water and no insects to eat had left it looking sad, with crispy brown tips to its dry pitchers.
After Hiro had reviewed the amount and type of water he gave it, hastily purchased mealworms to feed it, and fretted over it for a few weeks, at last the plant had settled in. The newest pitchers were still small but had already blushed an intense lacy magenta at their tops.
"So do you want me to add 'buggy bits' to our monthly supply order?" a bored voice asked, from the other side of the flight deck.
Hiro glanced around to meet the gaze of his zeroid companion, and smiled, affectionately. "Oh, I think even six-monthly should be far more than adequate, Owun. But if you could add it to our inventory, that would be good, thank you." He turned the plant a little under its light, and checked again that it had enough water in the dish beneath it. "Once I have established an ideal feeding routine, I would like it if you could set me a regular reminder for those, as well."
"Sure thing, Hiro. Just let me know what you want, when you're ready." After a moment, 101 added, more brightly; "She is looking pretty nice again."
Hiro knew that for all that Space Sergeant 101 griped about Spacehawk's private onboard forest, a lot of it was now just keeping up appearances, and the zeroid had (privately, or so he apparently thought) grown fond of the assorted plants aboard – particularly as looking after them was something he could actively be involved with. It was no secret that in spite of the occasional grumble, 101 would do literally anything for his beloved Hiro, and although he was perhaps a little too clumsy to do much more than dust and water, he treated being trusted to help look after the plants like a declaration of true love from his human – which, in a way, Hiro had finally realised… it probably was? In that quiet, understated way he did most things.
The lieutenant had never expected to fall in love in the first place, let alone with the silly, fussy little thing he shared a large proportion of his life with. But there was no denying it; ever since that time 101 – or Owun, as most Terrahawks had taken to calling him these days – went missing in London, Hiro had begun to feel… something. He'd kept trying to tell himself that it was just a lost zeroid, and he was just worried that someone might get access to Terrahawks secrets, and he was just frustrated that he personally was going to train someone new to take the command position, but… really? He'd missed his shipmate dreadfully.
It probably wasn't a huge surprise that they'd grown close. Yes, it had taken Hiro a (slightly embarrassingly) long time to cotton on to the fact that there was something rather deeper to his little shadow's behaviour than just robot-happily-following-instructions – Captain Falconer had finally taken him to one side and told him, in no uncertain terms, what literally everyone else could apparently see was going on. But after a few days of awkwardness (and a long, very frank conversation, triggered by a trip to the theatre) they'd both realised that actually, all they were really doing was putting a new name on what they already had.
They were still feeling their way, carefully; figuring out how it all worked and what they both wanted, but aside from Owun being much (much) more likely to try and initiate snuggles, now? They'd happily got back into the same old routines and were just as comfortable in each other's company as they'd always been.
"Indeed! Another happy plant. Good work to both of us," Hiro declared, brushing imaginary dirt off his hands.
"Well, I think that was more than ninety-nine percent your work, but I'm not going to say 'no' to listening to you say nice things about me."
Hiro chuckled and patted the top of the zeroid's casing in passing, and was rewarded with a chirpy laugh and an attempt at an affectionate headbutt.
With Mars approaching its most distant point from Earth, and Zelda being suspiciously quiet, it was affording Hiro a little time to devote to his experiments, like the whole tray of genetically-enhanced zinnia seedlings that he was currently nurturing. He wasn't particularly keen on the enemy's ongoing silence, but he implicitly trusted the zeroids to warn him the instant anything happened. Space zeroids didn't get "antsy" and were quite contentedly watching the solar system's various comings and goings. While they remained relaxed, so could he be.
Owun could usually be counted on to shatter the peace. "Ooh, sir! I have a-… con-… tact? …I think?"
Hiro straightened and turned to look properly at him; when the zeroid went from excited alarm to confusion in what amounted to less than a single breath, it was rarely a good sign.
The sergeant had canted over at a jaunty angle, like a puzzled dog with its head cocked. "Actually I'm not sure what I have."
"Explain?" Hiro slipped immediately back into the role of serious professional, turning his attention to the console displays.
"Well, there's… something out there? A teensy bit beyond Earth's gravitational sphere of influence. Everyone is telling me they're picking up a massive energy signature, but we can't see what it's coming from. It doesn't look like it has any mass? And I didn't see it coming!" At Hiro's quirked eyebrow, Owun shifted defensively on his perch. "…because it just appeared out of nowhere."
"Appeared out of nowhere?" Hiro echoed. "You know that is impossible."
"Well I don't have a better explanation just yet so I'm sticking with it. It did just appear."
For the zeroid to double down on something patently absurd – energy did not just spontaneously generate out of nothing – suggested there was something else going on that was just a step or two beyond his imagination.
Hiro tapped his fingers to his lips. "When we first encountered Zelda, she had miniaturised her vessel," he mused. "And all we could see was the energy signature. Does this match up with the readings we took then?"
"Ten-zero, lieutenant. And it hasn't moved, either. Whatever it is, it's just sitting there."
"Does it match any other known phenomena in Spacehawk's databases?"
"Ten-zero."
"Hmm. Bring up a visual feed and let me look."
Owun threw the current view up on the screen, and waited.
Hiro leaned over the control console and watched for several seconds. It remained a stubbornly motionless starfield. Whatever the zeroids were all looking at, it was indeed invisible to human eyes. "Compile the results from different spectra, appraise, and tell me what you see," he instructed.
"One moment sir…" Owun got his crew to enhance their zoom, and the image shifted slightly, the stars becoming fractionally blurrier as the zeroids all focused on something new. The image rippled briefly with distortions as a variety of analytical filters turned on and off.
After a minute or two of interpretation, the sergeant came back with a succinct evaluation: "Not sure. It looks like a lot of dust, really."
Hiro swallowed the sigh. "Not terribly helpful. Do you have any scans from before you noticed it?"
Owun hummed and scrolled back through the logs, optics flickering. "It's limited, as no-one was really focused on looking that way, but yes sir. Bringing it up now."
The screen shifted subtly to reveal the same otherwise-empty starfield, slightly wider. Hiro watched it, for several seconds. He lifted a finger. "Space sergeant, where-"
"There! Did you see it?"
Hiro gave him a tense look. He didn't like to ponder it too deeply just yet, but could there be a fault in the zeroid himself, somewhere? Or worse? He didn't like to think the whole crew could be wrong when they were all so fixated on something, but stranger things had happened. "Replay it? Half speed." The zeroid obliged, but Hiro still couldn't make it out. "What are you looking at?"
"Uhm. Hmm." Owun hastily did some more processing. "Let me see if I can-… there."
The image replayed again – pixellated by the increased zoom, but this time Hiro saw it. A handful of stars at the centre briefly shimmered, winked out, then became visible again. It lasted barely a second. "What in the world-… What happened there?" It looked almost like a giant dark hand had briefly waved in front of them. "You say there is nothing there to physically account for the readings?"
"Aside from dust? Correct."
Hiro opened his mouth to speak, but Owun got there first.
"Wait. Wait, there might be debris, as well."
"Debris?" Hiro frowned at him, frustrated. "From what? You said there was nothing there! How did you not see-…" He lifted a hand, as if to cut himself off. "Show me? Full magnification?"
Owun looked a little offended by the accusatory tone but did as he was told. "Full magnification, ten-ten sir."
The screen flickered and focused in on a handful of scorched, twisted lumps of metal, all slowly drifting outwards, away from each other. It looked like it had come from… some sort of explosion? An explosion they somehow hadn't seen?
What on earth was going on.
"What did we miss this time?" Hiro spread his hands, palms out. "While we were looking at… meaningless historic scans?"
"We didn't miss anything, lieutenant Hiro." Owun spoke slowly and precisely, just to ensure there was no doubt in anyone's mind. "There was nothing there. Then there was the energy surge, and the flicker, then dust. And now this." His shutters had already pulled partway closed, hurt. "It is beyond my ability to explain, sir. I can only tell you what we see, and I made you aware of everything the instant we saw it."
They just stared at each other for several heartbeats.
Hiro leaned his weight against the console. "…forgive me." He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I did not mean to sound like I was accusing you of paying inadequate attention. Of course this is not your fault." He offered his hand and let Owun bump his fingers, mollified. "I am… unsettled. Something we cannot define has apparently appeared from nowhere. Barely five minutes passed since you spotted the energy surge, and now debris has appeared." He studied the displays, for the briefest moments. "What else might be happening that we cannot see? Are we under attack? Should we be doing something to defend ourselves?"
"We don't see anything new," Owun supplied, optimistically. "And it still hasn't moved."
"Good. Please may it stay that way."
"…and I put our shields up already. Can't be too careful."
"Thank you." Hiro found a small smile. "Good forward thinking, because I think we need to get closer."
"I was worried you might say that." Owun visibly deflated. "Precisely how much closer."
"Close enough that we can pick up some samples. We need to focus on establishing some facts, because I am quite sure we will not be the only organisation to have noticed this, and Doctor Ninestein will not be happy with vague answers."
"Can't we just throw probes at it from over here?" But from the way his optic display was scrolling, the zeroid was already computing their journey. "Just in case it bites."
The pitch of Spacehawk's generators changed as her engines fired, and Hiro felt his weight shift with the inertia of the great battleship moving away from orbit. It didn't take long to cover the distance; Hiro took advantage of the brief period of quiet to update Hawknest.
"All right. This appears to be a good distance." The young man took a steadying breath. "Let us take a closer look."
"Ten-ten, sir. Bringing up a wide view now."
The screen came up with an augmented visual; the bright tapestry of the natural stars overlaid with digital enhancements showing the individual pieces of debris, the extent of the dust, and the mysterious energy source.
Curiously, all the debris was travelling away from the apparent epicentre in one direction. Hiro drummed his fingertips against the console. That was not how explosions tended to work. "You are certain your crew have not missed anything…?" he suggested, carefully.
Owun gave him one of those looks. "We've been scanning constantly since we saw it. I've been compositing the results ever since." He at least managed (this time) not to sound terribly offended by the insinuation. "If we missed anything, it's because it was invisible."
Hiro pursed his lips and returned his gaze to the screen. "None of this is behaving as I would expect." He flicked two fingers against the screen to zoom in on one of the floating objects. "It should not be all going-" Something worrying caught his eye. "Wait, stop! Hold the frame there."
The screen froze.
"Do you see what I do?" Hiro asked, very quietly, touching one specific area of the image on the screen.
Owun studied the frame. It was too small and distant to see much, particularly while it was still rotating, and whatever Hiro was wanting him to focus on was still just a black smudge that defeated his rudimentary imagination. "Let me see if we can get a better look."
Now his team all knew where to focus their attention, the image that came back was sharper, and larger.
And harder to hide from.
The piece of metal continued its lazy twisting path through space, and as it turned, a logo became visible. A stylised bird of prey, front on, wings spread, holding something in its talons. Whatever it carried had mostly vanished in the blast that had torn the metal apart, but enough of it was left – a horizontal straight line, like the top bar of a capital T – that neither officer could deny their own eyes any more.
"Does that not look like our insignia?" Hiro prompted, quietly.
"But we didn't do that!" Owun had already rocked slightly backwards on his perch in alarm. "…did we?" A little side to side flitter of the optics, as it looking for a hidden camera. "Is someone testing us, sir?"
Hiro frowned at him. "To achieve what? This was not unscheduled target practice-"
"But why else would anyone be using our emblem?! It has to be a test-! And- oh no, does this mean we failed? What will happen now-"
Hiro put his hands up in a plea for calm and thankfully the zeroid focused on him instead of fretting over his personal thesis. "I am anxious about what this might mean, as well," he eased. "But I think we can be confident that it is not a test. It does not appear to be trying to achieve anything, and quite possibly breaks the laws of physics."
"But…" Owun looked back at the image on the screen. "It's our logo."
"And why would someone detonate something with our insignia on to test us?"
"To… check… we were paying attention?" Owun suggested, hopefully. "If it's not a test, what is it?"
"I don't know. It is… worryingly near to Earth, and we cannot explain it." Hiro lifted a finger. "Yet."
"Do you think it's Zelda?"
"It would not surprise me if it was. Faking our insignia to pin any blame for something bad on Terrahawks does seem like her style. But I also think we are making hypotheses based off barely thirty minutes of study. We need some samples."
Owun knew what that meant. He didn't look happy about it, but squared himself up on his perch. "Ten-ten, sir. I'm taking 76 and 22 with me."
"Good. I will leave it to you to decide on what you collect. In the meantime, I will start programming some probes to get closer."
The other two zeroids met Owun at the airlock. They were happily unperturbed and obediently followed him out, which helped the sergeant feel a little more anchored. Telling himself it was all just a big test helped, too. Just to keep him and Hiro on their toes, make sure they were still operating at the top of their game. Nothing at all sinister or remotely scary.
The debris had continued its peaceful way away from the disturbance, rotating serenely, and gave Owun the chance to study it in detail as it passed.
Unmistakably a Terrahawks logo; all in black, with a line of engraved digits along the top edge. 00002
If this was the second one, what had happened to the first?
Well, that was for geniuses like Hiro to figure out. Owun fired an anchor line and snagged it, and reversed his own motors to bring it to a halt.
Take this back to Spacehawk, he instructed, guiding the chunk of metal over to the waiting 76, and go to cargo bay one. Lieutenant Hiro will tell you were he wants it for analysis.
76 chirped his acknowledgement and set off; 22 stayed patiently watching and waiting for orders.
I'm sending 76 back with a sample, Owun updated his commander. It's the bit with our logo.
Ten-ten; thank you. Have you identified anything new?
Only that there's a serial number on it. Nothing else yet. I'm gonna see if I can see where the dust is coming from.
Take care, Hiro cautioned. Don't go too close. We have plenty of probes.
Using little bursts from his positioning motors, Owun approached the co-ordinates of the disturbance. The energetic centre of it, about twenty metres away, glowed like a small star in augmented reality, but visually? There was nothing at all to see. Even the dust was difficult to pick out against the black of the cosmos. He turned one of his running lights on and the dust became a thin grey haze under the sterile white glow.
A sharp sensation not unlike pain shot through his cortex. Alarmed, he automatically snapped his shutters closed, protectively, but the sensation disappeared almost as quickly as it had come on. Felt a little like he'd rolled over a live cable.
He was just evaluating if it was safe to open back up when he bumped into a piece of floating debris; it made him jump. There hadn't been anything this way to bump into! He opened up a tiny slot and peeked out.
A piece of twisted metal was spinning away from him, trajectory altered by the impact. Where had that come from?
Actually, come to think of it… There was a lot of debris here. Far more than he'd seen before closing his shutters, when picking out which pieces to get his crewmates to take back to the ship. Sure there'd been plenty of dust, but not enough to obscure his vision to the degree that it would have stopped him seeing all this.
Can you see this, lieutenant? he asked.
Silence.
Well, that couldn't be right. Had that painful sensation fried his antenna, too? He ran a hasty diagnostic and it seemed absolutely fine.
Lieutenant Hiro, I've found some more wreckage that we couldn't see on the scans. Please acknowledge.
Silence.
Perhaps Hiro was just busy. Getting the lab ready.
Owun cycled to a backup frequency and tried again. Spacehawk, please come in.
Still no response. The zeroid fired a motor and got himself turned around, to face back towards home.
Things had… changed? He stared at it, baffled. Not just the extra debris – 22 had vanished, but there was no way he could have got all the way back to the ship in the few seconds Owun had his shutters closed. And the orbital battleship was further away than it had been – quite a bit further, actually.
Oh, he did not like this.
…Hiro? Honey? he tried, faintly. Please respond?
It felt like everything was dead. It was never this quiet!
I don't like this. Where is everyone? But it was like talking into the void. Please guys. Did I do something to offend you? I made sure Hiro knew you hadn't missed anything! I didn't blame you! Please talk to me? Where are you all?
Owun set off on the long journey back to the ship, hoping that she wouldn't move in the time it took him to get there. His own little onboard motors were good enough to transit the few kilometres in a decent timeframe but if Spacehawk took off without him, well. It'd take weeks to get back to Earth on his own from here.
He was at least finally satisfied that this had not been a test.
Spacehawk loomed up in front of him – unexpectedly dark and forbidding, large parts painted black and blending in with the dark of space, lacking the orange markings around her generators and engines.
Where normally Spacehawk had a bank of chattering space zeroids, keeping watch and alerting him to anything they spotted (and who would hopefully have been hailing him with greetings already), instead there was a heavy and obvious battery of sophisticated weaponry.
What. The. Heck.
He'd never been scared of his own ship before but right now he almost didn't want to go near it.
Almost. Couldn't figure this out by running away from it.
Had he passed out? Had he been drifting dormant in space, impossible to find? Had he been offline for so long, that without him to command the space zeroids, they'd been forced to install some other defensive mechanism against Zelda?
No, ridiculous. He liked to think he was indispensable but the brutal truth was they'd just program a new sergeant, not build a whole new defence system. Perhaps the dependable but command-averse 17 would get an (unwanted) promotion. Spacehawk would never have sat right here near the dust patch for the whole time it took to build a bunch of laser guns, either.
And anyway, his chronometer had dutifully ticked along as normal, not missing so much as a microsecond, and when he sent a request to the earth's universal timekeepers, it all matched up, within the usual acceptable relativistic margin of error for space travel.
The thing that worried him more – all right, frightened him, a teeny tiny little bit – was the fact that the clock didn't say Coordinated Universal Time.
It said Coordinated Imperial time.
His first thought was that someone was playing an unkind joke on him. (Wouldn't have been the first time Sergeant Major Zero had come up with something stupid like this to prank him with.) But he couldn't work out how anyone could have done it so quickly? Or thoroughly. If this was a prank, someone was really flaming committed to it.
The door was still in the same place, at least. He hastily navigated over to it and boarded the vessel, and allowed himself a second or two of relief that he was safely aboard. The airlocks clonked weirdly and didn't quite react to his code like they normally did, but eventually let him through.
Down in the maintenance accessways, it was… quiet. He peered around himself. Usually there was some sound aboard – crew moving around, the hisses and clicks and clonks of great ship's internal mechanisms, the rattle of equipment being serviced. The inaudible electronic chatter of the onboard zeroids, too, constantly talking to each other over the various servers and shortwave communicators.
This felt more like a ghost ship. No voices anywhere.
"Hello?" Owun tried, faintly. His voice echoed slightly.
Well, you're not going to figure it out if you stay down here hiding by the airlock all day, he scolded himself. Get up to the flight deck and talk to Hiro. He'll be able to figure it out.
He set determinedly off into the maze of tubes, trying to ignore just how loud he sounded as he rolled.
He was halfway to the command centre when he rounded a corner and crashed into another zeroid with their positioning beacon offline.
Owun automatically protested; "Hey! Watch where you're-"
Then he froze, the rest of the words dying unspoken in his vocaliser.
For several seconds, they just stared at each other.
The zeroid he'd collided with was particularly scruffy, sorely needing a good bath and a polish, with a chipped dusky pink brow band marked with three digits.
1 0 1
It was… him?