Triad: Fiction Excerpt

The Captain

“Water, I say. I haven’t had a thing to drink in hours.” The captain’s staff had plenty to report, most of it confusing. The captain was hoarse from giving orders and shouting exclamations of surprise. “Parker! Status.”

“Sir. Still no power from the main engines. Auxiliary is available at about twenty-five percent. Enough to keep us moving forward but every time we come within tracking distance of the alien craft again we’re back to no power. Weapons system unresponsive. Radios functional but satellite uplinks disabled.”

“Are we still receiving the strange radio noises?”

“Affirmative. Most likely the alien craft. The comm experts are saying it’s most like an animal noise in its tonal quality.

“How do they know that?”

“Sophisticated patterns, beyond the capacity of a machine to produce. Or more accurately an absence of pattern.

"Does it sound like bullshit to you?"

"Sir?"

"Could we be chasing a couple of gigantic explosive devices that only *seem* to be manned. And what kind of creatures could withstand a rapid dive of--how deep was it?"

"4000 meters, sir."

"4000 meters feet in less than thirty minutes?"

"Sir, I believe we're dealing with a creature navigating directly to a pre-selected location with a specific goal in mind."

The captain was as angry as he was curious. "Such as!"

"Such as they're looking for a source, either a certain raw material, such as manganese nodules, or a certain creature, such as..."

"A creature? And they're just going to dive into the ocean and start looking for it?"

"There is ample reason to believe the intruders have been to Earth before.”

“What reasons?” The captain asked in an unusually calm voice.

“The directness of all their movements so far, for one. And their adherence to the exact shipping lanes we ourselves only know from our GPS systems. They have patched into our information systems. For all we know they have monitored our radio communications. They somehow have the technology to navigate the dangers of our atmosphere and our oceans with no hesitations and no technical challenges, with a pair of relatively small vessels.