Through Glass Darkly Episode 1 (6 page)

‘Well he seems to be breathing normally at least,’ continued Doctor Zimmerman, while absently testing the response of the strange energy field surrounding the Captain, by moving his hand slowly closer, then further away from the barrier to see how the charge increased and then decreased in response to his presence. ‘And, unless I’m mistaken, he seems a little less pale as well.’

The droning which was coming from deep in the centre of ship, seemed to be increasing in volume and pitch, and was beginning to worry me slightly, when suddenly the pitch of the ship changed slightly, accompanied by the sound of a hawser or cable snapping free from its fastening. As a consequence the ship rocked alarmingly down its length for a moment, before settling at a slightly less acute angle. At the same time the droning seemed to drop back down in both volume and pitch by a couple of notches, as though the ship had been straining to break free of the cable, and then once free had relaxed a little. In any event, it made moving around the bridge much easier.

Jenkins was still looking around, trying to make sense of the various dials and switches which surrounded us on the bridge, but his expression also suggested he was far from comfortable about so many things happening outside his control.

In order to try and placate him, I offered to guide them to the armoury to pick up some weapons, and to the lensing laboratory to put together some broad spectrum scopes, while the doctor remained to keep an eye on the Captain.

The weapons turned out not to be needed, as after looking at the selection of weapons we had aboard the agents concluded that our firearms were similar enough to what they already had, to make them not worth taking. As for the more exotic energy weapons, after I’d described the power and intended usage, the agents decided they’d be a little too powerful for safe use in an urban environment.

The lensing equipment though was a different matter. I still hadn’t found my own gear among the wreckage, but the agents had seen some of the partial sets which some of the crew wore, as well as some of the slightly bulkier full spectrum sets in the lensing lab, which I think the agents assumed I’d just be able to show them how to use in a couple of minutes.

Hughes too was interested in these devices, so rather than trying to explain the difficulties I suggested using Hughes as a guinea pig to demonstrate how we used them and why they took a while to get used to.

Some people were naturally more tolerant of wearing lenses than others, but I knew it was something which Captain Hughes had had to work hard at, so suspected that the other Hughes, his double might also struggle.

While the angle of the ship meant that sitting in the lensing ranges was like looking up a set of stairs, we managed to get ourselves reasonably comfortable, with Hughes installed in the viewing chair and wearing the standard test rig, while we looked on from the observation booth at the back, which had a big lensing screen at the front to replicate what Hughes was seeing through at least one eye of the rig.

Before we started though I checked in with Dr Zimmerman over the ship wide intercom which was fortunately still working, and after discovering the Captain’s condition was unchanged we pressed on with the lensing demo.

‘We’ll start with the Ultraviolet,’ I informed Hughes, over the observation booth speaker. ‘As this part of the spectrum is generally a bit easier for first timers to adjust to. I’m putting a target up now, so you can see what it looks like without any lenses in place, and then I’ll bring the lenses down over first one eye then the other. If you start to feel queasy just wave an arm and we’ll take a break.’

It’s always entertaining when people get their first taste of a fully equipped lensing range, and this occasion was no disappointment. Both for the agents and for Hughes. I brought various targets and trophies into view, including some preserved body parts from the miasmic creatures we’d run into before, which with the right type of Aetheric charge running through them still reacted like living tissue.

And then we slowly cycled through the relevant parts of the electro-magnetic spectrum until whatever it was suddenly became visible. More than once one agent or the other would step out of the viewing booth as if to confirm that what we were looking at through the lensing screen wasn’t actually visible to the naked eye.

Hughes had to stop a couple of times, but seemed to quickly adjust, and be ready for some more.

But after half an hour of taking it nice and slowly, I thought it was time to make my point about how complex the different lenses and filters were to operate.

‘Ok, that’s enough of an introduction. Time to see how these things need to be used in action. We know that these Lamphrey type creatures can somehow shift which bit of the invisible light spectrum they refract visible light into. We’re guessing it’s somehow related to the other changes they can make to their physiology, as again, most of the time they don’t seem to be able to change quickly.

‘This means you’ll need to run through the relevant bit of the spectrum with the standard lens and filter combinations until you find your target. That’s just over a hundred combinations on each eye, and ideally you’ll run through those combinations in parallel to save time.

‘It can be quite overwhelming the first few times, so just take a breath and prepare yourself. We’ll only get half the experience in the booth as we watch what’s happening on our screen.

I quickly changed the remote settings for the test rig that Hughes was wearing, so that it would run through about forty different combinations on each eye, hitting the bit of the spectrum what would reveal the target about three-quarters of the way through the spectrum on the left eye. I set the lens screen in the booth to use the same lens combinations as that same eye, and then once everyone was ready I started the automatic sequence.

Jenkins lasted for barely a second in the booth before he had to look way, while Frazer managed practically the entire sequence. Hughes, exposed as he was to the different combinations for each eye, lasted for about half the sequence until just after the object became visible, but then had to rest his head in his hands for a minute to recover his composure.

I thought about showing them how a fully trained lensman could work through the different combinations in just a few seconds, but they were all looking a bit green, so decided to skip it and move straight on to showing them how we could create a few viewing scopes which wouldn’t necessarily give a clear picture, but would allow an untrained officer to see if something was there that wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

CHAPTER 9 - AWAKENING

We were just about to finish constructing the first batch of multi-spectrum scopes for the search teams when Dr Zimmerman called us over the ships intercom system.

‘Mr Hall, are you there?’ He asked. ‘This is Dr Zimmerman.’

We confirmed we could hear him and explained we were almost finished.

‘I think you may wish to return to the bridge,’ he continued. ‘The Captain is looking much better and the light on his mask appears to have stopped pulsing and is now just glowing with a steady light.

‘No, wait. The device over his kidneys is showing a similar steady light now also. I don’t know if this means he’s about to wake up.’

It was a promising sign, and even though we’d only been away from the bridge for an hour or so, I could tell that Jenkins and Fraser were eager for us to be getting back. We quickly finished the work we were doing on the scopes, bundled them all up and set off back down the ship to the bridge.

As we moved through the ship I thought I could detect a subtle change in the background noise of the ship, almost as though something else were about to happen.

A few moments later and we were back on the bridge with the doctor and the Captain, who was without doubt looking much better. He was still in his chair, but now he was sat much more upright and didn’t appear to be being held in place by the web of Arc energies that had held his slouched form in the chair before.

The doctor was watching his patient very carefully and barely took his eyes off him to acknowledge our arrival before turning back.

‘The device attached to his forearm also appears to have fully recharged now and it’s just the one over his heart that is still pulsing, though even that appears to have slowed considerably,’ he commented almost absently as we walked over to join him.

I could clearly see that the Aetheric capacitors on each of these devices had indeed gone back to being permanently illuminated with their distinctive pale green glow, while the one over his heart was noticeably slowing until just a couple of minutes later it too finally stayed permanently illuminated.

As if on cue, the still form of the Captain seemed to stir, and then take another deep breath, before slowly opening his eyes.

He was still clearly tired, and while he looked much better than before, he remained a little pale. After a moment of looking around he was prompted by the doctor about how he felt, and while he hesitated for a moment, eventually he replied.

‘Tired. But I don’t feel as physically drained anymore.’

He asked how long he’d been unconscious for, and was pleasantly surprised that it had only been an hour.

‘I thought it would’ve taken much longer for me to recover to the extent I feel I have.’

I realised then as he was talking, that while he still looked weary to his bones, he no longer struck me as someone who was dying. It hadn’t occurred to me previously that I’d been thinking of him in that way, but it was clear to me now.

Indicating he’d like to stand, the doctor went to assist him, but the Captain, while still a little unsteady just about managed it himself.

‘I realise you’re still not feeling like yourself Captain, but I’d like an explanation of what has happened here if you feel up to it,’ broke in Agent Jenkins. ‘I trusted you when you asked to come back here to recharge your devices, but you made no mention of the effect that your presence would have on the ship, or of the strange energies that would protect you once you were here.’

‘That is certainly a reasonable request and a fair point Agent Jenkins,’ replied the Captain looking straight at him. ‘And while something strange and wonderful appears to have happened here. What that is, I can’t pretend to understand just yet.

‘A lot of the engineering station appears to be operational again, perhaps if I were to take a look . . .’

But before he could even take a step toward the instrument panel, that strange hum that appeared to come from the centre of the ship became noticeable again.

‘Captain Hughes?’ Was Jenkins simple question.

‘It sounds like the main Arc reactors in the heart of the ship, which generate the vast majority of the energy that the ship runs on,’ the Captain replied looking perplexed. ‘But with neither the engines, weapons or any of the other major equipment on the ship in use there’s no reason for them to be any more than idling.’

‘Can you shut them down from here?’ The other Hughes asked.

‘Yes, yes we should be able to at least power them down. They can’t be deactivated altogether from here, but we can control their output and where that power is routed to.’

The volume and tone of the reactors was steadily increasing as the Captain moved to the engineering consoles.

‘Yes, it’s definitely the Arc reactors,’ explained the Captain as he examined the wall of dials and switches. ‘They’re creating a lot of power, but I can’t see where it’s being routed too. The console is still configured to share the power equally between all systems, but none of them are using any.’

‘Could it just be draining away?’ I asked. ‘Because of damage across the ship.’

‘It’s possible,’ replied the Captain. ‘But you’re talking about enough energy to power a large part of this city, and it would have to be going somewhere.’

As the sound of the reactors reached that same high tone as before, the ship suddenly jolted as another one of the hawsers that had been anchoring it also gave way, causing the ship to rock backwards alarmingly for a moment, before again settling at a much gentler angle.

‘That was the main line which was anchoring the nose of the ship to that building over there,’ interjected Fraser. ‘But I could swear it was one the cables that had become embedded into the concrete of the building when your ship appeared. I was looking straight at it and it just fell away from the wall it was sticking out of.’

‘It sounds like your reactors are still working Captain,’ commented the other Hughes.

And he was right the noise from the reactors, while it had dropped momentarily was building up again very quickly.

‘The reactors aren’t responding to the controls,’ replied the Captain, his hands moving across the control panel feverishly. ‘This doesn’t make any sense. This panel is clearly operational, but the controls are being ignored.’

The ship rocked again as another cable fell away from its mooring, and then another. Until within the space of a few minutes the ship was completely free of all its moorings.

‘Perhaps we should consider abandoning the ship for the moment,’ suggested the senior FBI agent, ‘Until we understand what’s going on.’

‘I’m afraid that isn’t an option Mr Jenkins,’ replied the Captain turning back to the rest of us. As the Captain of this vessel I am responsible for it, and as such I cannot allow several hundred thousand tonnes of metal and glass to float uncontrolled above this city, free to cause untold damage and risk to its residents.

‘We have to try and fly this ship to somewhere which won’t present so much danger to the public, and I’m going to need all of your help to do it.’

‘Central Park must be the nearest open space, away from any buildings or large numbers of people,’ suggested the doctor. ‘There’s a zoo at the southern end, but if you could make it beyond that, there’s a lot of open space, including the water of course.’