The Fermi Object

Airship

Two weeks had passed, and cooperation between government agencies had produced fruit already. Spitfire stood at an empty dock, waiting for the rest of the first crew to arrive.

The crew was a strange mismatch. Spitfire was on it as a supervisor because she was a survivor of the first official encounter. It was a position she debated her qualifications, even formally, only to be told that she was a uniting influence and that “We have confidence you can learn from others’ mistakes.”

Pablo was the first to show up, five minutes early and organized to a fault. Spitfire took one look at his messenger bag, and knew it was over-engineered and probably customized to an extreme degree, possibly even costing as much as those expensive saddle bags they used up in the snooty districts of Canterlot. This wasn’t something Spitfire felt she should comment on out loud, as her well-used suitcase probably cost as much.

Pablo clearly didn't feel like talking and neither did she, so he just pulled out a book and plopped himself down next to a shipping crate to wait. While waiting, Spitfire couldn't help noticing that the book was one of those cheap sci-fi thrillers you could get for four bits with the even cheaper wood engraving printed covers.

The next to arrive was an assortment of special ops; Spitfire couldn’t help thinking of them as one entity. They were here on guard duty, and even if she learned their names, she wouldn’t try to remember them afterwards. It wouldn't be their real names anyway. They looked inconspicuous and blended into the Canterlot crowds too well. Here, they resembled little more than a random mix of tourists and nobility waiting for an airship to dock.

Time passed, and Spitfire wished she had thought to pack a book somewhere in the outer parts of her suitcase. Sure, it was only five minutes until everybody was supposed to be here, but as the leader of the expedition she had to maintain some air of command, and nobody seemed up for conversation.

Prechetov was the next to arrive. The air around him was as cold as ever, but he seemed to have calmed down since yesterday.

“I wasn’t aware that you were going to be coming on this expedition, General.” Spitfire said, tossing off an informal salute. In this bizarre case she was technically a general herself, or at least elevated to the rank of one temporarily.

“I’m not. I’m far too close to all of this to hold any command over it.”

“Oh, did they take you off this case?” Spitfire inquired.

“No, I took myself off of it. Reflecting on myself after we last met, it was clearly the best option.” Destrier smiled. “Had good timing on that too- got to tell them I shouldn’t be in charge here before they could tell me I shouldn’t.”

The both had a chuckle at that.

“Anyways I thought I could borrow some of your optimism before seeing you off officially. I’d like to ask that you keep looking for my son.” Destrier looked her in the eyes. “Just a personal request, mind you. I’m not expecting you to find him standing on top of a pile of fallen foes, exhausted and ready to come home, but I gave up on him too early and I shouldn’t have.”

Spitfire nodded back at him, unable to think of a reply to that.

It was then that Silica Chert showed up, out of breath and almost late, followed behind by the rest of the scientific delegation. It was apparent that several minutes ago, they were prepared and even early.

"Got the wrong dock," Chert waved a hoof off at the only dock to have an airship in it. "Saw the ship and just assumed."

"It's fine." Spitfire said. "This isn't a cruise liner or a ferry, we wouldn't have left without you anyway."

"What isn't?" Chert asked, looking around the empty dock for an airship.

Unconsciously Spitfire looked down to confirm where she was on the dock, noting the wooden slats at her hooves and a small mark she left to remind herself. Then she turned to her right, grabbed something invisible, and opened up a door that seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

The outside of the door was invisible, but inside was clearly the inside of an airship hanging there in mid air as if suspended on nothing.

"Ah, the special ops spyship." Destrier said, in a good-natured inter-department manner. "Only heard rumors about it, never seen it myself. Well, you can't see it, that's the point."

He paced down the dock, while everypony else remained shocked, waving his hoof around as if trying to find something.

"Magnificent, not even a trace of an air current anywhere, magnetic induction and Pegasus magic eh?"

Here, Spitfire thought, was a nerd: not of comic books, or radio shows, but of military hardware.

It was a strange thought for her, a thought she had to roll around in her mind to get used to.

"I'll confess, I mostly came out here to see what they would give you for this mission." Destrier said with a smile on his face. "Only the best. Now." Destrier turned to Spitfire, all business once again.

"I don't know what they say in the spying agency, but go out there, and find out how we can give those bastards hell."

That bizarre change in tone was enough for Spitfire to forget herself in shock, until they were already on the spyship and closing the door. Inside was closed and a little cramped to accommodate the massive amount of magical and mechanical tech, as well as provide the lower levels as a viewing area. Since there was no upper deck, all of the mechanisms went fully up to the gas envelope above them.

She wasn’t piloting the ship, that was down to one of the faceless specialists, so Spitfire and the rest of the scientific crew moved to the back of the ship to the cabins. The cabins were small, shared a toilet and a “kitchen” which was an electric stove, a fridge, a sink and shelves upon shelves of cans. The bathroom didn’t even have a sink and amounted to little more than a toilet closet with a lock. However, this wasn’t actually where ponies were expected to live, this was where they were expected to sleep. Everything else, even eating, was to be done down on the observation deck.

The observation deck was huge. It ran the entire bottom of the ship. There were numerous tables spaced around, stools, telescopes, infrared magical detectors, radios, and even what Chert pointed out was a spectrometer.

“Why would we need a spectrometer with something like this?” Chert asked out loud.

“It’s not really a question of why we would need one, more that a reason couldn’t be expressed to exclude it. Maybe these aliens burn hydrogen instead of eating. That could explain how they survived in space for the better part of a billion years.” Pablo said, taking the spectrometer out of Chert’s hooves and putting it back down on the desk. “We have so little to assume and go on, even with the decayed ones we’ve studied, that leaving out unusual scientific instruments could deprive us of information.”

And so they set off into the swamps south of Baltimare.

Nothing happened on the way, apart from a heated discussion as to what the most bizarre of the scientific instruments was used for. It turned out that it was a prototype toilet unclogger that somebody had thought to put a screen onto. It had a name that told you nothing about it, and none of the scientists could immediately think of a use for it.

The swamps themselves were as unexciting as they always were: mud, plants, fetid water, dead trees and mangroves.

Spitfire came back from the crew quarters to find the first bit of excitement they’d had all day. One of the scientists, a botanist, had spotted something down in the water she didn’t recognize.

Spitfire peered down at the plant, it was a dark greyish bulb that looked like a half-formed glassblower’s experiment. It didn’t have leaves, just a stem that expanded into a bulb.

“I want to go get a sample!”

Spitfire immediately stepped in.

“No. That’s up to our specialists.”

“But, it’s the first alien plant life ever discovered! I HAVE to go see it!” the botanist insisted.

“You’ll see it plenty when it’s safely put away somewhere. We’re going to send down a specialist with a neck guard and scuba gear.”

“For water that shallow? I can see the bottom from here.” Another scientist, this one a biologist said.

“Assume nothing about these aliens. The ones we’ve already met have been far more dangerous than you can imagine. It’s not out of the picture for those plants to leap up, pull you under, and start strangling you.”

The tension could be cut with a knife as a pegasus in full scuba gear with a neck guard and a patented “unkinkable” air hose was lowered down to grab a sample of the plant. And… nothing.

The plant was just a normal plant and everypony breathed a sigh of relief.

That was where things went wrong.

One of the Riloks showed up, a new one. If Spitfire wanted to slap a name onto this one instantly she would call it a “Brain Monster”. It was clearly the most intelligent of them, as it looked like it was designed to look in six different directions at once, and it was the largest of the Riloks she’d seen by a large margin.

It warbled at the pegasus seemingly hanging out of thin air. Spitfire, able to hear even through the spyship’s glass could have sworn it was trying to say something.

Even as the specialist was hoisted back up into the ship, and the orders were given for a random course correction for the next half an hour so the ship couldn’t be tracked, Spitfire couldn’t keep her eyes off of that Rilok.