Black Frontier

The shuttle shook and rattled as it sliced down through the dense atmosphere of the jungle planet. As it broke through the cloud cover, Jack could feel it begin to level off and start to circle, looking for the landing beacon the Voyager had sent down.
“Get ready, boys”, Jack said, glancing back at his four man survey team.
The shuttle settled and hovered a few feet above the ground. As soon as he felt the forward motion stop, Jack hit the rear hatch release button and led his three companions down the ramp and away from the tingling repulsor fields. The instant the pilot saw that the four were clear, he pulled the shuttle away from the ground and began climbing back to the safety of space.
“Activate your scanners and move out toward that ridge. We need to find that radiation source and get back to this clearing before nightfall. No telling what we’d run into in the dark.” Jack explained, as he gestured for the other three to follow him out of the clearing and into an opening in the surrounding jungle.

The jungle was vibrant with life, but not as dense as it looked from the clearing and Jack discovered that he could make decent time. It was a good piece of luck, Jack thought as he shouldered his way through dense clinging vines and low ferns. It was of utmost importance that they determine if the radiation source was what they feared it was. As they pushed forward, the ground started a gentle upward slope and as they climbed, the jungle started to thin out. Jack stopped when he topped the ridge and studied his scanner display.
“We’re close”, said Dave as he glanced at the readout over Jack’s shoulder.
“Yeah, within 30 meters…….at most”. Jack said as he slowly waved the scanner back and forth in front of him.
“The source should be just through those trees.”

The four pushed their way through the undergrowth around the base of a pair of massive trees and came to an abrupt halt. In front of them the lush green undergrowth was charred and burned away, leading to a shallow crater in which there was warped and twisted metal with a distinctive turquoise hue. Jack walked to within a few feet of the crater and held up his scanner.
“Same alloy content as the others…..and it’s giving off that same strange radiation signature.” Jack said as he read the display.
“Call it in right now. Tell Control that we’ve confirmed another probe landing and that we need immediate pickup.”
“Got it.” Dave said, backing a few steps away from the crater and raising his left wrist to activate his comm. system.
Before he could utter a word, a harsh purple light blazed in from the team’s right and smashed into Dave’s chest, sizzling his exo-armor and hurling him into the crater. Jack and the remaining two spun and sprinted for cover, trying to make it back into the jungle. There was another purple flash and the man running to his right and slightly behind him screamed and fell against Jack’s legs, causing him to fall headlong into the dense cover at the edge of the clearing as more purple beams sizzled overhead.
Jack started running as fast as he could through the foliage, frantically trying to activate his comm. on his left wrist and getting only a low buzzing static. His comm. was being jammed. That told him two things: that the aliens were much more proficient in technology than anyone suspected, and that eventually, when someone bothered to check, the Voyager would discover the artificial comm interference and investigate. The burning question was how much of a presence did the aliens have here and did they have the weaponry to take out an assault shuttle?

Jack headed in the general direction of the clearing the shuttle had set them down in, but without much hope. If the disaster at the crater was more than just a chance encounter, then he assumed they were watching his pickup site. And he was right. After a tense 30 minutes of watching from a dense clump of ferns at the edge of the clearing, he got his first----everyone’s first----glimpse of an alien. The creature was concealed on the other side of the clearing, but Jack’s eye and attention were caught by a twinkling of sunlight reflecting off a shiny metal surface through the leaves and vines.
Jack forced himself to slow his breathing and activated his implant system to enhance his vision. The other side of the clearing jumped into sharp focus and Jack was able to get a decent look at the creature. It was about two meters tall and bulky, with a smooth turquoise colored skin that was exposed on its hands and face. It wore a shiny black segmented tunic that gave the impression of flexible armor. The alien’s face made Jack think of a turquoise hairless anteater with a broad flat nose and liquid black eyes without iris or pupil. In its large clawed hands it held what had to be some sort of energy weapon. Jack had seen enough. He carefully back away, taking care not to make a sound or to disturb any of the foliage around him. When he judged he was back deep enough, he stood up straight, put his back to the clearing and ran through the jungle as fast as he could.

Over the last five years, there had been a number of indications that humans were not alone out here in the fringe of the galaxy. Two colonies and a handful of exploration ships had been lost without a trace. In the case of the colonies, all communications had ceased and when a ship was sent to investigate, all they found were the burned and empty shells of the prefab buildings. No remains, no holo logs, nothing. The ships had simply vanished without even a basic distress call or hull-breach beacon. Forensic teams sent to the colonies had found a frustrating lack of conclusive evidence. The only thing they had been able to determine with any certainty was that the walls and doorways of the prefab buildings had been damaged with some sort of high energy weapon of unknown design. This in itself caused a moderate amount of chaos on Earth, Moon Colony and Mars, with people finally embracing the facts that not only are there aliens out there, but that they appear to be hostile.

Then, about ten months ago, a military deep patrol making patrols around the next series of colony worlds actually tangled with an alien vessel. The patrol ship’s passive sensors picked up the strange K-band radiation and the captain was just finishing his report to Titan control when the ship was hit with a high energy blast. The only thing that saved the ship was the fact that the captain happened to have the energy shields up at the time because he was concerned about the effects of K-band radiation on an unshielded ship. The blast jolted the vessel, but did minimal damage and allowed the sensor operators to get a fix on the origin of the fire.
The rest was official military record and was played and replayed extensively by CNN for everyone to see. The alien vessel, presumably realizing its location had been pinpointed, came darting out of the fringes of an asteroid field and made a pass at the vessel, firing repeated bursts of purple energy beams. On the CNN tapes, the ship gave the impression of a predatory black beetle, bristling with sharp spikes, and moving with an almost liquid speed.

Jack pushed himself hard until he judged he had gone about 3 miles. The jungle was starting to thin out and the ground was sloping upward. Slowing to a brisk walk, he tried his wrist comm again and got only static. So the jamming had some range to it. He glanced ahead and saw that he had come to the edge of the jungle. He was at the foot of some low hills that grew into rocky cliffs before leveling off in a tabletop plateau about two miles away.

Jack started up the hills, hoping the aspect and elevation change would get him out of the jamming. He checked his wrist chrono as he walked. He was an hour past the check in time and the Voyager would have to have noticed that. Whatever was going to happen should happen fairly soon……provided the shuttle could locate him. Another fifteen minutes of jogging found him completely out of breath and at the base of the cliff. Up close it was not as bad as it looked and he was able to ascend steadily by a series of rugged ledges. About 50 meters short of the top, Jack had to stop and rest. He had climbed close to one thousand feet and where the jungle had been hot and steamy, the air on the face of the cliff was cool and pleasant. He found a good spot on the ledge and sat down, leaning his back against the cliff face. The past three hours had taken their toll and fatigue hit hard. Jack closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. Suddenly, his wrist comm beeped, jolting him out of his daze.

“Drop team, drop team, acknowledge signal. Voyager to drop team, acknowledge.”
“Voyager, drop team……alien presence, we were attacked and the other three team members are dead, repeat, hostile alien presence, attacking with high energy weapons”, Jack spoke rapidly. “My comm has been jammed but I’m well away from the initial contact area. Requesting pickup from the plateau to the west of the landing site.”
“Shuttle on the way, Jack. Should be about 10 minutes.”
“Be careful, control,” Jack said, leaning back to look at the top of the cliff, “they have very effective weapons and no hesitation to use them from ambush.”
“Understood, Jack. Here we come.”

Jack quickly climbed the rest of the way to the top of the plateau and eased over the edge. The top of the plateau was fairly flat and covered with a lush grass broken up with large boulders. He made his way to a nearby tumble of boulders and began scanning the sky for the shuttle. As he waited, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder how the aliens knew to monitor the initial drop site. Did they just happen to see the shuttle landing and taking off? Not likely. It was reasonable to encounter them close to the wreckage, but not at the landing site. Jack suddenly looked at his wrist comm., wondering if they could have monitored the communications between the shuttle and the Voyager. They had not been using an encrypted channel……there hadn’t been any reason not to………but even if they had been able to listen in on the comm. channel……how had they understood what they had been saying? Before he could ponder this any further, his comm. buzzed.
“Jack, we’ve got your implant beacon. We’re landing in 30 seconds”
“I hear your repulsors now Control. Be careful, I think our friends are listening,” Jack said as he moved away from the boulders.

He could hear the distinctive buzzing of repulsors coming in from his left. The shuttle came into view, circling the plateau and flaring to a stop50 yards in front of him. As he started running toward the lowered rear bay door, there was a flash of purple from his right, narrowly missing him and sending stinging rock fragments into his face. He dove behind a nearby boulder and yanked his laser pistol out of his pack. He peered around the edge of the boulder in time to see the shuttle’s aft laser nail two aliens that were running toward the open rear bay.
“Jack, get in here. I think that’s all of them.” The pilot’s voice crackled from his comm..

Jack broke cover and ran toward the hatch. As he neared the two downed aliens, one of them twitched and rolled onto its back. He could see where the shuttle’s laser had burned through the creature’s shoulder. Acting on impulse, Jack clubbed the creature in the head with the side of his gun and drug it up the ramp and into the ship.
“Get us the hell out of here.” Jack yelled to the pilot, as he quickly searched the alien for any other weapons.
Finding nothing that looked dangerous, Jack pushed the creature into a storage locker and engaged the lock. As he turned away from the locker, he saw the co-pilot standing there with a horrified look on his face.
“What the hell, Jack? “
“Shut up and get us out of here,” Jack said as he sat down and strapped himself in.

Three hours later, after Admiral Clark had gotten the yelling out of his system, Jack stood at the observation window to main med lab with the Admiral and two of his aids, all of them looking at the restraint table that Doctor Varn had the Alien strapped to. Varn had been working on the creature for an hour and had removed all of the gleaming black armor and was now working on the shoulder wound.
“I’ve managed to get the pieces of melted armor out of the wound, and I’ve removed the charred skin and flesh. At a glance, this guy---assuming it’s male----has blood remarkably similar to our own. I’ve already got a sample going through the sequencer to get it mapped.” Varn said as he prepared a biopad for the shoulder.
He finished dressing the shoulder wound and looked up at the Admiral.
“I’m pretty sure it will live, but again, this is best guess on my part. This wound would not have been fatal to a human if infection was avoided.”
“Admiral Clark pressed the comm. switch and said, “Fair enough, Doctor. Have your people place a med bed in a quarantine room. I’ve had engineering set one up for full audio and video monitoring including a feed to the translator. If we’re lucky, one of the algorithms will pick up a baseline for a translation. We’ll task a bridge crew to monitor it constantly.” The Admiral leaned back, released the comm. switch and turned to Jack.
“Regardless of what I said earlier, you did the right thing, Jack. You made a split second decision in the field, and I’m glad you did. If the creature lives, and if it tries to talk we’ll get intel that we desperately need. While you were down there, we got word that an observation outpost at the edge of m76 got wiped out.”

Before Jack could react to that statement, Doctor Varn stepped out of the medlab and stepped close to them, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure they were alone.
“I happened to be the only one in the lab when I removed the chest and head armor. It had this on underneath,” the Doctor said, holding out his hand. Dangling from Varn’s hand was a necklace………of teeth.
Jack took the necklace in the palm of his hand and looked closely at the teeth.
“Human”?, he asked Varn.
“Not only human, but very ancient human.” Varn said, taking the teeth back. “Look at this……….lead filling. Those haven’t been used in 1000 years. It’s outside my purview, but I’d say that Intelligence should know that we’ve recovered a 1000 year old human tooth from an Alien 100 light years away from Earth.”
“You’re positive………the filling couldn’t have come from some frontier dentist at one of the colonies who had no steel or polymer to use?”
Varn was shaking his head. “No way. First of all, all the colonies have the ability to make as much polymer as they need from basic materials like rocks, dust and such. But more to the point, I’ve already dated the lead in the filling………over 1000 years old.”
“Only you know this? Admiral Clark said, taking the teeth back and putting them in a pocket. “None of your assistants were in the lab when you—“
“No, just me, and I won’t breathe a word of it.” said Varn cutting the Admiral off. “I should get back. I want to monitor setting our friend up in the quarantine unit.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Please notify me immediately if anything changes. Come with me, Jack.”

As Jack and the Admiral walked to the lift, the Admiral said, “Based on what I’ve seen from the report on the destroyed colony compared to what you’ve told me, it was the same species. So, we’re dealing with a hostile alien race with equivalent if not superior technology. Pretty much the worst case scenario. Obviously, we need to make some sort of communications breakthrough with the creature and get a baseline for their language.”
“I agree, Admiral. And from what I’ve seen first hand, they are very capable and tough fighters. We’ve been expecting something like this for a long time, and I know that there are mountains of contingency plans……most of them useless speculation.”
“Exactly,” said the Admiral, nodding his head.
“Which is why I want you to pick a tight group and develop our own plan. Obviously, you have the most experience with them……….you’ve seen them in action, seen their weapons, seen how they react. Pick a good tech, an engineer and get to work. Report directly to me…….verbally. Nothing goes into the main computer yet. I’ll have to report this in, of course, but it will go straight to Space Command and hopefully they will have the sense to keep a lid on it until we know more. In the meantime, I’m going to contact the colonies personally and warn them.”
“If there’s any left to warn,” Jack said as they stepped onto the lift.