The Crystal Beast

[Ritah Lowen 0]

Dr. Ritah Lowen was at a loss to explain it. Fortunately, she didn't have to and for that she was grateful. She had been able to stick close enough to Dr. Mele to know what was going on. But the 'how' and 'why' were questions none of them had been able to answer. The entire scenario seemed unreal. It was more like something you would read about in a science fiction novel. Neither medical school or the Academy had prepared Ritah for anything like this.

 

But she had been warned to expect surprises....and surprises seemed to be the order of the day.

 

Again, the Admiral was....unhappy. Who could blame him. The Manticore was attacked a couple of days earlier and nine crewman were killed. Three were mortally wounded while the remaining six were lost when the ship suffered hull breaches on Decks 12 and 13. The skirmish occurred during a training simulation. As soon as the drill ended, their undetected adversary vanished as illusively as it first appeared. They never even caught a glimpse of it. Some suspected the drill might be responsible for the attack. Therefore, after repairs were completed, the simulation was restarted, only this time, precautions were taken to guarantee the ship would not be taken by surprise again.

 

But they were taken by surprise......

 

They came face to face with the perpetrator....it was big but not huge and made of a crystal like substance similar to silicon. Again, it attacked and again, it disappeared the moment the simulation was shut down. But they had been able to gather data on this mysterious villain. Science and engineering were still trying to figure out how it's propulsion system operated and analysis was underway to better identify the exact characteristics of it's weaponry.

 

But the biggest surprise of all was the fact the crystal beast carried passengers....and not just any passengers. There were compartments of some kind deep inside the crystal. And inside some of those compartments were five humanoids. They were all alive and appeared to be in fairly good condition. And they belonged to the Manticore.

 

The crystal beast now possessed five of the six crewmen lost to the hull breaches. How they got inside the crystal was unknown. There were rumors floating around the alien vessel possessed a weapon that could have transported the five to the ship during it's initial attack on the Manticore. Such a thing was unheard of and Ritah refused to believe it until there was definitive data to support the theory.

 

Yet, she was forced to admit that it made sense, in a strange sort of way. If a giant crystal ball could suddenly appear and disappear, if it could float through space without any detectable means of propulsion and somehow sustain human life within it, then why couldn't it have a multipurpose weapon? A weapon that enabled it to retrieve whatever it wanted while destroying everything else.

 

Ritah was left to ponder the questions while answering a code. Lieutenant Aross had been out of surgery for just a couple of hours. They were finding it difficult to stabilize her. One problem or another arose every fifteen or twenty minutes. The Lieutenant was Dr. Mele's patient but Ritah was more than happy to cover for him. The CMO had to come up with the answers the Admiral was demanding. She didn't envy him his job. He needed to figure out how those five crewmen were able to survive in the belly of the beast. Finding the answers to that mystery made stabilizing Lieutenant Aross seem like child's play.

Edited October 27, 2007 by Ritah Lowen