This one is from Rowan’s point of view, as a young Unifleet officer struggling to do well and win promotion and status.

***

Rowan guided the Guardian Wasp as she skimmed along just below the light layer of clouds shrouding one of the planetoids in the Harmony group. He found the name ironic because, with the UniCouncil and the Angevire forces vying to establish control and supremacy over the region, things were anything but harmonious.

Jost Banargee, his flight engineer, sat beside him, gaze fixed to the vidscreen. The ship might be small and austere, but their instruments were of the latest and best quality, able to sense subtle differences in temperature, anomalous radiation and any other potential signs of life, machines or something that simply did not belong.

Jost whistled through his teeth. “Whoa, what the f*** is that?”

“What have you got?”

“Damned if I know. Something–metal, heat sources inside, moving at about a hundred-fifty knots… too slow to be as high as it is off the surface. Looks like a tin can with a pointed end and some kind of para-wings or maybe solar panels on the sides. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Intel didn’t say the Angevires had anything like that!”

Rowan set the controls and moved behind Jost to see for himself. He found the object to be as mystifying as the other man did. “It doesn’t belong here,” he said after a moment. “Let’s hit it with a tractor beam and see if we can bring it in close. If the reaction seems hostile, we can turn the lasers on it.”

Jost shrugged. “Aye, aye, Captain.” He activated the magnetic beam and focused it on the strange vessel.

The closer they got, the odder it appeared. Surprisingly, they got no reaction from the craft at all. Either it was not manned or the occupants were not eager to fight. Surely they had to realize they were being drawn to under a hundred meters from the Guardian Wasp.

Shaking his head, Rowan hesitated for a long breath. Do I bring it into contact or not? He could see now the tiny size of the peculiar vessel. Its reflectivity had made the size hard to determine at first. The skin or surface seemed to be highly polished. Though no huge space liner, compared to this miniscule craft, Guardian Wasp seemed like a gas giant beside an asteroid. He made a fast decision.

“Open the lower bay doors. I’m going to bring it in.”

Jost shot him a sharp, worried look. “Do you think that’s wise? What if it’s some kind of bomb, a chem or bio device that’ll poison us?”

Rowan looked at the other man, raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Come on, man, where’s your sense of adventure? Do you want to live forever? We may have discovered something totally amazing here. Hell, we might all get medals.”

Jost laughed. “Yeah, you could be right. Okay, in she comes.”

It took a bit of careful maneuvering, but in less than a half-hour they had the peculiar craft inside the second, empty storage bay, the doors shut again, and on-board sensors checking for anything that might be hazardous. The reports came back clean with only a few curious facts. The craft had water on board, was made of iron, sheet tin with traces of some other metals and it held a single living creature whose vital signs indicated it to be human or of similar type.

Before they’d completed the project, three other crewmembers who were on duty had joined Rowan and Jost in the cabin. Once the sensors completed their scans, the five of them sat silent for several seconds, absorbing the amazing facts.

“We still don’t know what we’ve got, but I vote one of us goes and checks it out in person. There’s no hint of anything dangerous, no haz-chem, bio or radiation. Unless one of you is ready to fight me for the honor… ”

Rowan swept the other four with a fast glance. He could read eagerness on every face, but they all deferred to him. He felt a small sense of victory in the knowledge that Lieutenant Cantor had elected to stay out of the way for most of their voyage, making only a token appearance every day or two, but otherwise leaving command of the Guardian Wasp in Rowan’s capable hands. Cantor would not gainsay his decision, whatever it might be.

“Jost, you’ve got the ship. Muldoon, you come with me as backup, just in case anything goes wrong. You’ll stay in the airlock, while I go into the bay and check this thing out. I don’t expect any problems, but that’s when one’s likely to crop up. We all know about Murphy’s Law.”

Muldoon, a veteran NCO, was a man in whom Rowan felt confident. He would obey orders to the letter, but also had the brains and initiative to do whatever seemed necessary if it fell to him to act. In short, a good man to have at your back. They made their way to the lower bay.

Together they entered the airlock, but when the first door shut behind them, Muldoon waited while Rowan activated and went through the second. He approached the shiny cylinder with caution, alert for any sound, movement or overt response. The silvery wings on each side had fluttered to the plastisteel deck, crumpled but without obvious damage. They looked like fabric, perhaps fine, close-woven silk. A fragile network of deftly linked and hinged wooden rods seemed to control their motion. A few of the slender pieces were broken, but most seemed to have survived intact.

The craft itself still looked like a tin can, sheets of metal curved and riveted together to shape a cylinder about four meters long with a diameter of about a meter-and-a-half, Rowan guessed. What he took to be the nose had been shaped to a fine point. A few small round windows ranged along each side. Where was the door, or was there one?

He tried to peer through one window, but the glass seemed smudged or perhaps steamed up. He could barely see a glimmer of light through the window opposite the one he looked into. Then a faint sound snagged his attention. It sounded like a very human moan of distress from within the craft.

Damn it, I’ve got to figure how to get into this f***er!