“Explorator’s Log, Date 21/08/3209…” Lieutenant Sheila spoke into the computer, “arrived at the next system along projected exploration route. Got back the preliminary scans of the planet. Found fuck all, as expected…” Six months into her twelve month voyage, exploring the furthest reaches of deep space, the young woman had long ago stopped bothering hiding her boredom and frustration with her mission.
Sure, back on Earth, the Company made it sound exciting, explore the deepest regions of space, discover new planets and things, but, as it turned out, space was mainly just that, empty space and most of the planets in it were all alike to, chunks of rock and ice floating through space. Sure some of them had atmospheres, but none of the ones Sheila had found so far were hospitable for humans, or any life for that matter.
None of them were even good candidates for terraforming, though it would probably be decades before humanity had expanded enough to be looking to terraform this balls of rock. Building a space station, orbiting one of the larger chunks of rock would be more than enough to run the, largely automated mining stations the Company ran, which was why Sheila would be spending the next two weeks in this god-forsaken place, scanning asteroids, taking samples, to evaluate its potential as another minor mining outpost for the Company to think about establishing in 20-30 years when enough of the hundreds of other mining outposts starting running dry.
“I didn’t even get to name the place.” She thought, disgruntled. As soon as she’d dropped into the system, the computer had already tagged it with the inspiring name of: System 42B-183F. Still, at this point, she doubted she’d be able to come up with any sort of name past: “Worthless System” assuming she hadn’t already used that name three systems ago, and didn’t go for one with more profanity.
She finished out her log and switched it off. The computer continued humming away, the automated scanning process starting up, so Sheila unbuckled herself from the seatbelt, floating up out of it. The ship did have artificial gravity, but running it was expensive, so she was only allowed gravity during certain parts of her daily routine. Just enough to keep her bones from completely disintegrating after months and months in deep space.
The explorator floated out of the cockpit and into the crew compartment. The empty crew compartment. Originally, the vessel had been designed with a crew of three in mind, but some company bean counters had decided it made more sense to automate most ship functions and go with only a single crewman. Meant she could stay out longer, go deeper into space with the same amount of supplies and oxygen. And besides, the new pills should keep the lucky explorators from going crazy from the isolation.
Sheila was floating in front of the ship’s food processor, trying to decide which of the “10 exciting flavors!” she wanted on her nutrient paste today, when there was an odd chime from the computer that controlled the automated scanners. “What the hell?” She muttered aloud, turning back to the hatch. The computer sounded like it was going crazy.
Hurriedly, she floated back to the cockpit and looked at the computer. Figures were scrolling across, long strings of indecipherable numbers, outline mineral compositions of asteroids, spectrographs of gas clouds, analyzing the system for whatever useful materials could be quickly and easily harvested. And apparently, it had found something.
“This can’t be right…” Sheila thought. There was an asteroid with an unusually rich amount of ferrous material in it. “To be this rich...it would have to be refined metal.” She thought. “That, or there’s an extra moon we didn’t notice.” Intrigued, she climbed into the pilot’s seat and strapped in before firing up the engines, directing the ship in the directions of the anomalous sensor readings.
“Oh my god…” She thought, as they got close enough for the visual scanners to pick up the object the readings were coming from from the many other orbiting space objects. It was a ship, as she’d suspected, but it wasn’t another Company exploration ship. In fact, it didn’t appear to be any sort of ship humanity had ever built. For starters, it was way too big and the design was distinctly...alien.
It was also derelict. The sensors detected only a few small sources of heat and power, far too few if the ship had been active, she assumed. As her own, much smaller, scout ship got closer, she could see the ship had a hole in one side, where one of the asteroids that made up this belt must have struck it. A bit of bad luck for the aliens. The belt was stable enough it would have been easy enough to put the ship into an orbit that would keep it clear of them for quite some time, had a rogue asteroid not gotten knocked out of its expected path.
Looking at it, Sheila had to decide what to do. As far as she knew, no one had yet made contact with an intelligent alien species, must less one capable of building space faring ships. She should return home and report this immediately. The Company would want to send a proper team to look over the ship, assess it. Of course, that team wouldn’t include the humble explorator who’d found it.
“This is my one chance then.” She thought to herself. The first woman to walk the corridors of an alien spaceship. She’d be famous! “Just a quick jaunt over, poke around a bit, then I’ll come back and head home.” She promised herself, suiting up. She programmed the autopilot to keep her own ship close by, then prepared to space walk over. She considered heading for the broken section, where the asteroid had hit it, but decided not. There was still debris, this accident couldn’t have happened too long ago, and the area was likely unstable, too dangerous. But the computer had identified several hatches on the other side of the ship that looked like airlocks. She’d try them first, see if she could get one to open.
“Odds are I’ll just spend some time banging on the door, trying to figure it all out.” Sheila thought to herself. Odds were the aliens had entirely different ideas of shipbuilding then humans, who knew how they opened things?
In actuality, though, getting aboard proved to be easier than she thought. The airlock had a large, easily noticeable lever, outlined with bright high visibility markings, much the same as it would on a human starship, covered in some odd alien script. When she pulled the lever, the hatch slid open. Inside, another lever closed the hatch and the airlock opened automatically.
Switching on her suit’s flashlight, Sheila began to explore the dark, empty hallways. This part of the ship still had atmosphere, there must have been automated bulkheads that deployed when the ship was disabled, and not too different from Earth’s, nitrogen, oxygen...in slightly different ratios and with a few additional trace gases. Still, she kept her helmet on, just in case.
Though she looked around, she didn’t see any sign of crew, living or dead. “Must have abandoned ship when they were hit.” She thought. The question was, where they planning on coming back to salvage the ship? Then, by chance, she stumbled into a cargo bay and found the aliens.
It was obvious the room was a cargo bay. It was a massive space, hundreds of yards long, packed close with strange tubes fashioned of metal and what appeared to be glass or something like it. The surfaces were covered in frost, with power down the ship seemed to have gotten quite cold. Sheila approached one and scraped off a few inches of frost so she could peer inside.
The alien was humanoid, two arms, two legs, torso and head. It was also female, Sheila could easily see a pair of large round breasts on the front of its chest. The alien wore no clothes at all. But for the fact the alien had somewhat mottled green skin it would have been difficult to distinguish her from any other woman, albeit a very fit, athletic and very sexy woman.
Sheila couldn’t see anything of the alien’s face. Her head was covered in a metal helmet or hood of some sort. Further down, a metal piece covered the alien’s crotch, a thick tube connecting to the back of the tube. Her arms and legs were held with some sort of metal restraints, to keep her in place in the tube. For a long moment, Sheila wondered if the alien was dead, but a second later she saw the slow rise and fall of the aliens chest and realized the alien was alive, but seemed to be in some sort of hibernation.
“Could this be some sort of colony ship?” Sheila wondered. It seemed unlikely. If these aliens were anything like humans, and considering they had the same basic shape, breathed the same sort of air that was a safe bet, there wouldn’t be any planets nearby worth colonizing. Was this just how they traveled? Letting an automated system run the ship while they slept through the tedious voyage?
Sheila floated from tube to tube, examining the occupants. All of them were the same species, she assumed, and all were female. “Maybe there’s another cargo area with males.” She thought. She might have continued exploring for it, when she was distracted by movement further down the row of tubes.
Something was coming towards her, slowly. It was some sort of mechanical being, spheroid, with a metal body and hatches, from which extended long metal tendrils. From the easy way it floated, pulling itself by the tendrils, it had been designed with zero-g movement in mind. Just as Sheila was debating whether to approach the odd machine or if she should try to run or hide, it turned, fixing her with a glowing red eye.
“Escaped Slave Detected!” The bot said. Sheila was momentarily distracted by the amazement that she’d heard the bot speaking, through her airtight helmet and suit, it was as if the words had simply appeared in her head, without having to go through her ears. Then came the amazement that she’d ‘heard’ it in English, instead of some alien language. It took her a minute or so before the actual words that had been ‘said’ sank in.
“Escaped slave?” She thought, confused. What did it mean by that? There was no way it could be referring to her, could it?
By the time she realized the bot was coming straight towards her now, and that she ought to flee, it was too late. She’d just pushed off the pod she’d been examining when a hatch opend on the bot. A strange beam shot out, striking her in the back. Instantly, she was enveloped in some sort of crackling energy field. At the same time, she found herself completely unable to move. She strained as hard as she could, but remained immobile inside the field while the bot approached.
“Securing Escaped Slave!” It ‘said’ again, reaching out with some of its tendrils. The tips were equipped with cutting lasers and it carefully, methodically began to pell her out of her suit. Sheila started to panic as the suit was cut away, remembering how cold it was, but to her relief, the field she was in seemed to be keeping the warmth of her suit in, even as the broken pieces of her suit were quickly whisked away by more tendrils.
They didn’t stop with her suit either. Her jumpsuit soon followed, along with her underwear until Sheila was completely naked. Her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. “What a way to make first contact…” she thought. Then the fear returned as the bot turned and started pulling away, dragging her along, helplessly, in the immobilizing field behind it.
Eventually, they came to a halt, next to one of the tubes. It was identical to all the others, except, as the bot interfaced with it with one tendril and it cracked open, Sheila could see it was empty. But not for long. The bot turned, adjusting the field so Sheila’s position was changed, legs straightened, arms now at her sides. She was slowly slid into the tube. No sooner was she in place, then metal restraints slid out of the tube, trapping her arms and legs.
A metal hood, identical to the ones the other aliens, the other slaves, wore, descended, covering the frightened explorer’s head. It must have been adjustable, because it seemed to fit the contours of her head perfectly. Sheila gagged as something thick and rubbery extended from the inside of the tube between her lips, forcing apart her teeth and pushing towards the back of her throat. At the same time, a second metal plate slid into place between her legs. Sheila really squealed as two more tubes began to press into her openings down below.
Then, things began to fade into blackness as the hibernation pod closed shut and activated. In seconds, Sheila was slumbering peacefully, unaware of her predicament. Soon, the owners of the ship would return to salvage it, along with its cargo of slaves, now increased by one, to be carried to a distant star, deep in the reaches of space...