The shattered edge

[arvg]

Doctor XiaoBei wondered why on Earth he had stepped on an alien device, definitely not at all like him... ahh well. He did have a headache, and was in chronic need of a cigarette.

He shrugged off Brooks' grip and adjusted his coat. "I am fine, now then..."

He looked at the consoles that Jayce had been randomly touching. Thankfully they were dark and unresponsive. The last thing any of them needed was for him to have triggered some kind of auto-defense system, or lock-down protocol.

"Colonel Alvarez," XiaoBei looked sternly at the Commander. "Please restrain your men, I can't do my job if they keep disregarding my advice, and go about randomly shooting bullets into things, pressing strange buttons... and other wise doing the most bone headed things imaginable!"

Alvarez heaved a heavy sigh, "Comradas, you heard the Doctore, stop doing stupid... things. Si, happy Doctore?"

Lang ignored Alvarez's question, looking about himself as if in a dream. Despite the many objects and installations that were impossible to identify, there was a kind of comprehensibility to the place: here a desk, there a screen of some kind.

Alvarez and the others were so fascinated that they didn't notice what XiaoBei was doing till they heard the pop and crisp of static.

Consoles around the bridge lit up with ancient sigils, holographic displays. In the middle of space before the bridge hung an image of the Coalition flotilla. Red halos circling each of them.

"Weapons systems?" Alvarez asked, tersely.

"I don't know," XiaoBei admitted. "The language is... vaguely similar to something I have seen before on ancient relics... but it definitely isn't Dom K'Vosh, nor their progeny, the nomads."

"Can you read it?" Alvarez pressed.

"No," XiaoBei replied. "At least... well... I can pick out one or two words. That's a warning..." he pointed to a series of sigils. "And that," his finger shifted to another console. "Is a distress beacon... I am deadly serious here... touch nothing. Even accidentally... Who knows what weapons systems just switched on... and what is now targeting our comrades out there."

"I do not like this, Doctore," Alvarez admitted. "Winters can you contact the Flotilla? Dimitriov and Steeles, perimeter... Master Chief, keep them covered as you can. Brooks... ese, you so much as twitch I'ma gonna shoot you myself, holmes."

While the others readied themselves for some kind of defense, XiaoBei went back to what looked like the central console.

He had been right, they were in the ship's nerve center, and the console and its peripherals were the nucleus of it all. XiaoBei began a form-function analysis, fearing that he would never get another chance to study it.

Certainly, the ship used no source of power that he could conceive of. Some uncanny alien force coursed through the fallen ship, and through the console. Perhaps if he could get some data on it, or get access to it...

At XiaoBei's cry, they all turned with guns raised, as strobing light threw their shadows tall against the bulkheads. The command center flashed and flowed with power like an unearthly network of electronic blood vessels.

The console was surrounded by a blinding aurora of harsh radiance that pulsed through the spectrum. XiaoBei, body convulsed in agony, holding fast to the console, shone with those same colours as the enigmatic forces flooded into him.

"Don't touch him!" Alvarez dragged Brooks back, the youth had been about to attempt a body check to knock XiaoBei clear. Winters moved to one side, well out of the range of the discharges, to get a line of fire on the console that wouldn't risk hitting XiaoBei. Winters made sure her selector was on full auto and prepared to empty the magazine into the console.

But before she could, the alien lightning died away. XiaoBei slumped slowly to the deck, breathing raggedly.

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