Gyrfalcon being under a pressurized roof made unloading a lot easier.

When they’d loaded Axchxairx’s gear from Freya, they’d been hampered by the single airlock connecting the two ships. Docked as they were, it created a narrow bottleneck that slowed their efforts to a crawl. If suit work wasn’t inherently strenuous, time-consuming, and dangerous, it would have almost been simpler to simply muscle the crates through the vacuum and load them via one of the larger airlocks. Instead, it forced them to do things the old-fashioned way, though thankfully they hadn’t been working under any time constraints. No one was happier about the change than Isi himself, now that offloading the ship wouldn’t suffer the same handicap.

“Ready for the next pallet?” he asked the alien scientist, swatting the automated loader.

“Yes, indeed!” Axchxairx said enthusiastically. “Right this way.” Scurrying ahead, he guided the purser and his carryall forward, out of the cargo hold and into the oversized parking garage now housing Gyrfalcon. Behind them, the rest of the crew were busy muscling the next batch of containers onto another portable platform as the loader trundled through the hatch and into the facility proper.

Peering closely at the collection of crates and boxes, the Eleexx academic consulted a handheld tablet before bobbing his head in excitement. “Ah yes, this way!” he exclaimed, pointing towards the far corner of the ground floor. Isi tapped a command into his own device as he sent the machine to its destination, letting it come to a halt a minute later as it began offloading the collection of equipment.

Several meters away, Mairead was staring at a collection of alien technology and scratching her head, while Isi chuckled at her plight. “Problems?” he asked her.

“I have no idea what any of this stuff is,” she lamented. “How the hell am I supposed to put it together if I don’t even know what it does?”

Axchxairx scurried over to help, giving the gear a quick once over. “Ah! This apparatus is for monitoring the spacetime field’s quantum state while in flux due to topological isomorphism in an n-dimensional manifold.” He beamed at her, glad to have been of assistance.

The Tinker gawked at him. “I understand the individual words, but when you put them together like that, they don’t make a lick of sense.”

“Ah, yes, well… I admit this is a rather rarified field of study,” he confessed with some chagrin. “There are perhaps half a dozen other scientists in the entire Perseus Arm who have a working knowledge of the theories involved.”

“That’s great and all, but if you want me to put this stuff together, I’m going to need a ‘Theoretical Quantum Physics for Dummies’ primer I can use as a guide,” she said sourly. “This isn’t anything like the drive on Gyrfalcon.”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed, moving to assist her. “Will you require my further guidance in offloading your vessel?” he asked Isi.

“Just point me in the right direction,” he assured the alien. “I’ll take it from there.”

“Splendid!” he said gratefully, before returning his attention to Mairead’s dilemma. “If you look here, you can see where this emitter connects to the console with…”

Isi tuned out the rest of their conversation as he finished dropping off the pile of gear before sending the loader back for another trip. Arriving at the cargo bay, he spotted Slavko and the captain piling up the next load. Remi had rolled up his sleeves and worked up a sweat as they muscled the heavy crates waiting to be transported.

“Appreciate the help, Cap’n,” Isi said gratefully. “Be glad when we’ve offloaded all this crap.”

“Not like I had anything else on my plate,” Remi grunted, dumping another box on the pile. “Besides, with a crew as small as ours, we don’t have the luxury of standing on ceremony.”

“Terra knows that’s true,” Slavko chimed in, “though I couldn’t help noticing Xui ain’t here helping.”

“I want someone on Bridge watch at all times, just in case,” the captain informed him. “Look at where we are and who we’re working with. Sure, he seems friendly enough, but we haven’t survived this long by being optimists.”

“What if he tries to screw us over?” Isi wondered aloud. “You gotta figure this base has some sort of defenses, and even if it doesn’t… how do we get past the roof?”

“By shooting big fucking holes in it, what else?” Slavko grinned.

“Something tells me it won’t be quite that easy,” Remi grimaced, “which is why I want everyone keeping their eyes open. That’s why I had Mairead give the good doctor a hand assembling his equipment. What better way to get a layout of the facility?”

“That’s smart thinking, Cap’n,” Isi said with approval. “What else do you have in mind?”

“Stick close to the ship as much as we can, for starters,” he continued. “If we need to take off in a hurry, we don’t want to be chasing folks down. I’ve already got Mairead looking for a way to override the roof controls if we need to make a quick exit.”

“And if she can’t find a way?” Slavko asked quietly.

“Then we come to my second precaution,” Remi said darkly. “From here on out, no one goes unarmed, but I want it kept quiet. Hideout pieces for everyone. If our friend tries anything funny, then the gloves come off.” He looked at the other two men. “Anyone have a problem with that?”

“Not me,” Isi answered, shaking his head.

“Since when have we had trouble pointing a gun at the Troika?” Slavko grinned.

“Glad to hear it,” Remi nodded in satisfaction. “Hopefully it won’t come to that, but I want us to be ready. If Axchxairx is on the up and up, then with any luck he figures out a way to defeat the Yīqún, and we all go home heroes.”

The gunner suddenly grew thoughtful, enough so that it caught the captain’s attention. “Something on your mind?” he asked.

“It’s just… say he does figure out a way to beat them,” Slavko said slowly. “What then? What’s stopping the Troika from using that same weapon against the Alliance?”

“Now there’s a disturbing thought,” Isi said unhappily.

“It’s the way they think, though,” Remi growled. “Even if the doctor is playing it straight with us, I guarantee the other Eleexx won’t. Hell, we wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for them screwing around with things they should have left alone.”

“So what do we do about it?” Slavko asked him.

“Whatever he finds, whatever he comes up with, we need a copy for ourselves,” the captain decided. “I’ll talk to Mairead about it, see if there’s a way to download his research without him finding out.”

“And if there isn’t?” Isi worried.

A shark-like grin came over the captain. “Then, in true Corsair fashion, we take it from him and dump his body where it’ll never be found,” Remi said quietly.

It took two more days of effort to offload the rest of the cargo. Once they’d finished, Axchxairx and Mairead spent the better part of a week testing and linking up the various components. Other than basic manual labor, the rest of the crew was all but useless in making the last connections, freeing them up for other tasks. Remi shamelessly took advantage of the opportunity, and within a day the entire facility had been thoroughly scanned and mapped, though much of the technology was still labeled “Unknown”.

Mairead was doing her best to learn what she could about the strange alien equipment, but she was sadly out of her depth. Axchxairx patiently answered her questions as best he could, only she often faced the same quandary she’d had initially, where even the explanation itself proved less than illuminating. After clarifying the situation for her captain, he told her to do the best she could, and with any luck, they’d get a better handle on how the equipment functioned further down the road.

But finally, the alien scientist announced his preparations were complete, and that he was ready to begin his experiments, inviting the crew of Gyrfalcon to witness his first test. Hovering over a console, Axchxairx was practically beside himself with excitement.

“... good… good… excellent!” he chortled, making minor adjustments before dashing over to another control board and double-checking his readouts. “Pentaquark concentration is rising nicely… graviton decay is leveling off to compensate… antineutrino concentration holding steady at one part per trillion.” Lifting his head, he looked over at the Terrans. “I am ready to begin the first test.”

The crew glanced at one another in confusion, before Remi finally asked, “And what exactly will this test do, doctor?”

Axchxairx rubbed his chitinous manipulators together with glee. “If all is successful? I hope to convince the local spacetime to momentarily lose its cohesion.”

Mairead’s jaw dropped. “You want to rip a hole in the fabric of space? Here?” she said frantically.

“Isn’t rather that dangerous, doctor?” Remi asked him, while the others prepared themselves to follow his lead.

“Oh, do not concern yourselves. I have taken all the necessary precautions,” he assured them. “The facility is well shielded, and we are far removed from the experiment’s point of origin. We are completely safe, I assure you.”

“But what if something goes wrong?” Xuilan demanded, sounding more than a little hysterical.

“Impossible!” he promised her, “if for no other reason than the energy levels I am using for this first test are far below the threshold for creating an actual rupture in spacetime. I am simply going to nudge it, not rend it asunder.”

The crew looked askance, despite his protests. “Assuming all goes as planned, what exactly will we see?” Remi queried him.

“Ah! From a purely visual standpoint, very little, I’m afraid, though if we are fortunate, we may observe a brief ripple in spacetime. If it occurs directly between our position and a stellar body, it will be even easier to detect. We may observe some effects of gravitic lensing if the conditions are correct.” Going back to his console, he brought up a display of the local starfield, with the nebula’s filaments and gas clouds in abundance. “This should make monitoring the test easier,” he explained, before going back to his final preparations.

Remi leaned over to his engineer. “Should we be worried?” he asked quietly.

“Haven’t a clue,” she shrugged. “I mean, yeah, he’s playing with some pretty powerful forces, but is he doing it safely? I couldn’t tell you. Most of this stuff is way beyond me,” she admitted.

“Bit late to run now,” Isi pointed out.

“Then let’s hope he knows what he’s doing,” Xuilan said nervously.

They watched in silence as he made a few final alterations before entering a command into the facility mainframe. “And now we see,” the scientist said in hushed tones, as a deep vibrating thrum began building all around them. “Energy levels are rising… standby to initiate continuum pulse in five… four… three… two… one. Initiate pulse.”

The reverberating hum swelled to a zenith before exploding into space, a burst more felt than seen or heard. Even as they watched the display, a strange shimmer seemed to tug at one star on the screen, resembling the stellar twinkling observed at the bottom of a gravity well because of atmospheric conditions.

But there was no atmosphere in this region of space.

“Yes!” The Eleexx scientist leapt in euphoria, bounding and capering across the open space. “Did you see it? Did you see it?” he practically shouted, dashing off once again before any of them had a chance to answer. In a flash, he was back at the console pulling up data… the official results of the test, most likely. He was engrossed with the readouts, though every few seconds a buzz or chirp would escape his mandibles; sounds the voder around his neck could not translate, perhaps because they were not words at all.

“So… that’s good, right?” Slavko ventured.

“Good? It is astonishing!” Axchxairx squealed, his excitement undiminished. “The measured disruption to spacetime was 23.71% over projections! It was even more successful than I could have imagined for a first attempt!” He began digging even deeper into the data readouts, muttering to himself as he reviewed the test’s results.

“I’m guessing that’s it then?” Isi wondered aloud. They glanced over at the scientist for some sort of response or sign he’d heard the question, but after a few moments, it became obvious he was tuning them out while he lost himself amidst the raw data.

“I suggest we make a discreet exit,” Remi proposed, nodding towards the hatch leading back to Gyrfalcon. “Congratulations on your test, doctor,” he told the scientist, raising his voice to be heard.

Axchxairx managed a half-hearted wave without bothering to turn around, already preoccupied with the success of his experiment. With a collective shrug, the crew left him to his devices, arriving on board ship within a handful of minutes. Taking a seat at the head of the mess table as the others joined him, he took stock of the situation.

“I realize this is why we brought him out here in the first place,” Remi began, “and he’s said all the right things during the trip about distancing himself from the Troika, but… should we be encouraging this?” he wondered aloud.

“We’re kind of deep in the game for second thoughts now, Cap’n,” Slavko said uncomfortably. “Especially this being straight from the Admiral and all.”

“It’s not like you could stop them from doing research,” Isi pointed out. “At least this way we know what’s going on.”

“And if he comes up with something, we can grab it first,” Remi vowed, the hungry growls of his crew punctuating his remark.

“Gotta love the irony, using their own superweapon against them,” Slavko grinned. “You know, if he comes up with something.”

“And if it becomes necessary,” Xiulan chimed in.

“Pretty sure that’s the one part we can count on,” Mairead said sourly.