I cracked a bleary eye to spot the blinking red alert-light on my bedside console. It was part of the automated wake-up call, something to make sure that I didn't sleep in after partying too hard the night before or... whatever. Bluh. This was actually the least intrusive setting, too. I know some other people in Habitat Engineering have their consoles blast music to get up-and-at-'em. That sounded like a good way to end up having to explain a broken console to Maintenance. I was never a morning person.
"You have one urgent message from Cynthia Ballesteros. Would you like to listen?"
Starting the day off with an emergency? Well, if it was an actual emergency they wouldn't have let me sleep until my alarm. Hell, Cynthia probably would've sent Security to haul my ass wherever she needed me to be. I kind of had a tendency to drag my feet.
"Yeah, go ahead."
No sense wasting any more time. I swung my legs over the side of my bed and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, spotting my discarded grey jumpsuit crumpled on the floor. Cynthia was going to give me shit for having a wrinkled uniform, I just knew it. Her voice came on over my console as I was zipping myself up.
"Vee, I need you to haul over to Receiving once you're awake. Something just arrived and we need to take a look at it before it's handed off to R&D."
Huh. What could've been brought in that HabEn needed to examine? The closest thing on our schedule wasn't for another week or so, when the new HabPods were supposed to arrive. But that would be a pretty cut-and-dry installation, nothing that I needed to trek down to Receiving for. Well, at least it wasn't a fire. Could be worse.
There was the jab at my appearance that I was waiting for. Whatever, if she actually cared about the grooming standard she would've reported me a while ago.
"Oh, you know me. A real... party animal."
That at least managed to get a hint of a smile. I could really turn on the charm when I wanted to. Or at least that's what I liked to tell myself.
"By the way, I heard about what happened with-" Cynthia started, but I didn't let her get very far.
"No, it's-... I'm fine." I cut her off. I already had something prepared for this. "It was a long time coming. Long-distance things never work out, y'know?"
Cynthia nodded.
"Yeah, I know. Still doesn't make it any easier."
"No it, uh, it doesn't." I cleared my throat a little. Talking about my personal life with my direct superior wasn't something I wanted to be doing.
"Well, I have something that should take your mind off of things for a little bit." She walked over to the door and tapped her hand against the lock panel, which caused it to open.
I followed her into the hangar-like accommodations - tall ceilings, fueling stations, cargo haulers, a dozen or so personnel buzzing around. In the center of all this were a handful of people from R&D, I could tell from the diagnostic equipment and the way they handled themselves. They were gathered around... something. It was large, a couple of heads taller than I was, oblong and reflective, shimmering wherever the light hit it. I must've been staring for longer than I realized, because Cynthia decided that she had to grab my attention again.
"Pretty, isn't it?" she said, managing to sound as unimpressed as ever.
"What is it?" I finally managed to say. I was awestruck. I had never seen or heard of anything like this.
"One of our salvage teams brought it in last night. They said it was just sort of floating in empty space, they stumbled upon it out of pure happenstance. R&D have been all over it since then. Results have been inconclusive, but as far as they can tell it's pretty inert. Some background EM fields, but its so weak that it shouldn't even interfere with your personal electronics."
She handed me the tablet she was holding, which was displaying all of the preliminary data that the scientists had gathered. It all looked pretty innocuous, if it wasn't for the fact that it didn't answer just what the hell this thing was.
"So, you need someone from HabEn to give the all clear before we bring it into the station?" I said, glancing up from the tablet to look at the... thing, again.
"You got it, Vee." She gestured to the team working around the object. "R&D are dying to get a closer look at it. They're thinking it's not a natural phenomenon."
"Alien in origin?" I'm sure she could detect the incredulity in my voice.
"Potentially. We won't know until they get it into their lab and run more tests. What do you say?"
I looked back at the tablet, at the rows of diagnostic data, the spectral analysis, researchers notes. This could be a big find. I was feeling a lot less sleepy that I was an hour ago.
"Yeah... yeah, just make sure that they follow the proper decon procedures and take the necessary precautions before they introduce it to any of our systems. I don't need it shorting anything out or, I dunno.. exploding."
"They'll be careful, Vee. Salvage teams bring stuff in all the time."
I handed the tablet back to Cynthia.
"Not like this."
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