Multiverse War 04 The War After Roswell by Chris Nuttall

Author:Chris Nuttall [Nuttall, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-07-17T09:02:12+00:00

Chapter Thirty: Alien Abduction

Wanderer

Deep Space

The alien ship was creepy, but Commander Jane Hammond was surprised to discover that she was enjoying the long task of escorting the ship to the asteroid base, even though it was boring and possibly dangerous. Fleet Command had been advised by the Researchers from the Joint Study Group to order them to remain in the launch, but sanity had prevailed; a trip of a week – unless the Abraham Lincoln returned in time – would be hellish inside the launch, with all five of them cooped up in the tiny spacecraft.

“The rockets are all in place,” Commander (second-class) James McPherson informed her, as she donned her spacesuit. The design was a modified skin-tight suit; it wasn’t a full battlesuit or emergency suit, a concession to the requirements of anyone on the launch. She rather appreciated it, even through the launch was so small that they had to change within eyesight of one another.

She sighed. After a week of travel, they were all going to smell so bad that the asteroid’s crewers would probably insist on them being fumigated, decontaminated and quarantined under the Code Blue regulations, never mind that they hadn’t been onboard the Wanderer without a spacesuit. McPherson had suggested that it might be possible to pressurize a section of the Wanderer, to improve their exploration capabilities, but the Joint Study Group had vetoed the suggestion in no uncertain terms.

“Good luck, Commander,” McPherson said, opening the inner airlock for her. Another thing she liked about the skin-tight suits was that they allowed her to move almost normally; she walked into the airlock without the strange jerky waddle that the battlesuits or armoured spacesuits required. The airlock ran through its cycle…and there she was, standing on the hull of an alien spacecraft.

“I’ve got the wire now,” she said. One of the first things they’d discovered about the Wanderer was that its hull wasn’t made out of metal, but of something that reassembled ceramic, but was very hard indeed. From the records that the Joint Study Group had – reluctantly – forwarded to them, a researcher had tried to hammer the Roswell craft with a hammer…and had had to be sent to hospital. Instead of using magnetic boots, they had had to string wire from the launch to the breach in the hull they used to gain entrance.

She paused to look out at the stars, somewhere towards Jupiter, and then stepped along the hull. In spite of constant science-fiction novels, the ones written before space flight became common, she was in no real danger of drifting off into space – unless she did something really stupid – but care was programmed into them at the academy. She pulled herself along until she reached the breach, and then she followed the wire into the corridor. By now, slipping into the impossible gravity field was old hat; she knew exactly how to do it.

“I’m onboard,” she radioed, just to make sure that McPherson knew where she was. Again, it was probably unnecessary, but it was a safety precaution, just in case.

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