The Bone Cutter

The region appeared empty.

Not empty in the form of the immense voids between the stars and the rocks and the planets, but empty meant the ship’s pilot Aata saw nothing of note. They had a terraforming machine, but these settlers had neither the equipment nor expertise to assemble a habitable planet from nothing. 57 human souls jumping into the void so far that it was impossible to map their path ahead of time nor guarantee they would warp into the galaxy intended. But now, Aata set a course putting the ship in orbit on a tiny planet where they would plan and prepare their next move.

The ship’s mighty magnetic drives warped space pushing the ship evenly into position, with the occasional hiccups pulling and pushing Aata in his chair slightly. The ship’s engineer would likely wake up early realizing his work was cut out for him as interstellar jumps did not just consume a lot of fuel, but it was hard on the expensive engines. The reason they jumped out so far out was that the distance jumped was largely irrelevant, and the incentive was to go as far out into empty space to have the best chance of finding unclaimed planets. The downside was Aata and his wife knew they would get to know these other settlers very well, as they were the only human company they would have for much of their lives.

After some time traveling, Aata’s computer alerted him to a gravitational anomaly. A warping in space was detected nearby, although the computer struggled to differentiate between the anomaly and its own engines. Aata started adjusting the sensor and Hehu the Captain entered the pilot’s module saying, “The ship tells me she’s landed,” but then saw Aata was distracted.

The captain sat in the co-pilot’s seat and looked at Aata’s work and said, “Did you find something?”

“Maybe,” he replied. Hehu sat in the co-pilot’s seat and after a few minutes of sorting through contradicting results, they found a significant point in orbit around the planet whose gravitational pull was usually large and changed over time, then suddenly ceased.

They had all heard of speculation of microscopic black holes and stray chunks of neutron star matter which could all hypothetically exist. However, no one really knew about that, which was why Aata and Hehu kept this matter to themselves as some of the crewmembers were desperately hoping to find alien life out here.

They entered orbit around the new planet, and Aata killed the main engines. The investigation was interrupted by a call from Kaihautu in the mess hall saying breakfast was ready. They wanted everyone at breakfast so the crew could decide where they would go next.

At the crew meeting that followed, the consensus was they should move on. They would be in orbit around the small planet for some time as they repaired/refueled the engines and looked for a nearby star to jump to. Everyone wanted a chance to get out of the confined ship and explore the planet below with the excuse they might find useful minerals and such.

Aata, Hehu, and the senior pilot Kai all returned to the pilot’s module, and they brought Kai up to speed on what they were looking for. The computer found a recent impact on the surface, and it knew for sure that the object’s metallic surface was not yet covered by indigenous sand. Kai relieved Aata a little early and Aata thought Kai and the Captain wanted to keep the potential glory find of the mystery satellite for themselves, but this was Aata’s chance to be with the first party going down.

Aata, his wife Katarine the ship’s medic, boson Manaaki, the geologist Rangi, the cook Tui, and crewmembers Nyree, Pania, Rongo, and Tia all crammed into the shuttle. The unusual crew size was mostly due to this being mostly a recreational trip and all they were investigating was a meteor strike. Aata sealed the hatch, ejected the shuttle from its moorings, and they all watched the imposing bulk of their home ship shrink in the distance in the black background of space. Aata turned thrusters retrograde and slowed their orbit bringing them down. The planet below was of brown sand and immense mountain ridges that are only possible on planets with substandard gravity. The planet had no atmosphere of consequence, which was worse than it sounds since the shuttle descended into a layer of thin free-floating dust.

They carefully descended upon the coordinates of the impact area, and the nearest flat landing area was a few hundred yards away. Aata touched down, and at that moment everyone began unbuckling and suiting up. They all exited through the tight airlock one at a time and assembled as a group, all looking at each other in their suits and the craggy slopes they had landed on. Rangi pointed towards a ridge in the side of the mountain partially obscured by dust which was the goal of their journey. The hike and climb up the mountain were very easy in the low gravity but ordinary movements became awkward. Nyree once missed a step and fell but was unhurt of course. There was a strange wind about the dust that Aata thought strange as there was very little air to push it. The dust appeared to be moving up the slope of the mountain, moving like a strange brown fog.

Soon they mounted the ridge of the crater to not see what they expected. The crater was very old, with the meteor in the center weathered with age. However, around that meteor appeared to be the remains of a significant encampment with scattered buildings, piles of building materials, and scattered storage boxes.

Aata pulled himself over the ridge, and all others followed, and they descended the crater wall to what was perhaps the find of a lifetime. As they approached, they saw the camp appeared abandoned and in disarray. Although, the gaping square hole in the largest building revealed where life support systems likely once were. They approached that hole and looked inside, the whole building was on legs to protect it from sand, placing the gaping hole at Aata’s shoulder level. They each looked inside, and Tia, Nyree, and Pania did not want to look again as inside on the floor were bones.

Aata pulled himself in and pulled up Katarine after him. A medic with a home diagnosis machine would have to suffice for a forensic team. Others in the crew worked up the courage to come in themselves, although some kept their investigation outside out of respect for the bodies.

They kneeled beside the bones inside what appeared to be crew living quarters with four folding bunk beds affixed to the wall and a kitchenette attached to the other wall. The bones were near the kitchen sink and there was putrid black tar of what used to be blood stains.

The skull was mostly intact except for a removed section of the cranium, and Katerine said the facial features were of a people she did not recognize. The machine confirmed this, saying it was a human of an unknown race. Aata picked up some of the other bones and saw they were also damaged and asked his wife “Why would you saw a bone?”

The home diagnosis machine confirmed what they already knew: Teeth marks. Some creature had gnawed off every bit of flesh they could get. Something gave Aata the ghoulish idea to look up. Hanging from the ceiling directly above the remains was a single large meat hook.

Manaaki turned on an embedded computer display system in the wall. All the controls were in a foreign language, but the system appeared to be opened to a final recording and Manaaki found what appeared to be a replay button. The video played of a man dangerously thin addressing the camera with animalistic fear in his eyes. None of what he said was understood, but he spoke on several things until a loud sound was heard. The man yelled some sort of guttural curse that sounded something like “qassob” as he quickly took a weapon from the bed and ran for the airlock, with the video cutting out due to inactivity. Manaaki removed the whole display system and took it with him.

Tia called over the radio that they had something outside, and they all emerged from the doomed house. Rangi’s geologist eye immediately knew certain mounds of sand were not natural, and his ground penetrating radar showed a half dozen more skeletons all buried separately near each other in shallow graves. Further scanning revealed these bones were also cut and gnawed, and the crew decided they had seen enough.

The trip back to the ship was silent as the crew was now hypervigilant. Escape from the planet was of no relief, as whatever this was also in orbit with a magnetic drive. Aata knew his own crew was practically unarmed.

The mess hall meeting was a grim affair. Kai and Hehu both said they had found the potential source of the gravitational anomalies; A ship adrift in orbit in the reverse direction only a few miles closer to the planet that they would pass nearby every few hours. The ship was of wholly unknown make and origin.

Most wanted to leave as soon as possible, but the sooner they jumped the riskier the jump was. However, no one could stand living so near to whatever that thing was that had eaten the foreign crew. Most of the crew were farmers and miners looking for unclaimed places, not adventures looking for monsters to fight. The weight of opinion seemed defensive, wanting to leave this region as soon as possible but the issue of whether they should try and destroy the alien ship before it could hurt anyone else was left unsettled.

After that meeting which occurred over dinner, Aata went to Manaaki’s office to see what he was doing with the evidence from the camp. Manaaki found that none of the hardware they found was compatible with the ship's so he was attempting to hotwire the foreign system to a breadboard and hoped the mainframe could make sense of the mess of ones and zeros it gave it. This would only work if the foreign computer’s internal storage was not encrypted. Katerine poked her head in finding it strange Aata was still awake. Aata went to get some sleep before his next shift started.

When he got up his first question to Hehu and Kai was “Has it moved?” They said no, and Aata wagered Hehu had been glued to the sensor array controls this entire time. Aata stood behind them wondering if Kai even wanted to give up the pilot’s chair. It occurred to Aata that the alien craft also could see them in their orbit and wondered what they were thinking. It was near time for the next flyby, and presumably Kai and Hehu would want to see it.

The computer highlighted “Suspect Spacecraft” on the display as it rounded the planet when at that very moment a signal was received. Long moments of static followed by a tirade of guttural syllables.

Hehu made their official reply, turning on the broadcast radio and speaking slowly “This is the Tasman hailing unknown vessel, do you read us?” After a long silence, the alien ship turned on the radio and the same voice from the recording said something in that same strange alien tongue. The back and forth between Captain and the alien where the alien became clearly angry over time if such a thing did exist in an alien brain. This ended when the alien craft passed out of range.

Kai was now visibly nervous and said, “I’m not the one to admit I’m scared of anything, but I can’t stand to wait around any longer. We have got to do something.”

Aata, ever the repressed adventurer, was of like mind. Hehu only raised an eyebrow and asked what the younger man was fixing to do.

“We have demolition charges onboard. We’ll fly out on the shuttle and blast it.”

“You sure you can dock on his ship without it noticing?”

They were silent and Kai said, “We don’t really know anything anymore. All I know is we’re not alone out here, and that thing in the ship wants to eat us.”

Hehu looked at them both and said, “I’ll take the controls, you two take Wiremu and Rongo with you.”

Aata cut in saying, “And don’t tell Katerine.”

“I am not telling anyone” the Captain replied.

Wiremu and Rongo were two strong miners who oversaw the equipment they intended to misuse. Soon Aata and Kai were at the shuttle’s controls with Wiremu and Rongo jealously guarding their cargo. Aata looked over his shoulder asking if everyone was ready, and Kai preprogrammed the flight to start on his command.

The alien ship was passing by again, and their window of opportunity began when it passed by and disappeared below the planet’s horizon. They flew out to a higher orbit where a small retrograde thrust placed them in a reverse orbit now moving parallel to the alien’s orbit. A careful amount of thrust slowing them down brought their orbit lower and lower.

The ship converged with the alien ship slowly but surely, and before it came into view again Kai cut the main power, turning off even the cabin lights. They could see the alien ship in plain sight below and in front of them, a large and imposing piece of meticulously crafted metal.

Kai by his preference remained at the controls while the rest donned suits. They would have to use the main cargo hatch, which meant closing off the pilot’s module and vacating the air. They were not moored to the alien ship so there was a significant chance of people or equipment drifting into space. Each man attached a tether to himself to the shuttle.

The miners quickly found the alien ship’s surface was indeed metallic and thus tied magnets to the crates of explosives. Aata took one magnet and pushed off the edge of the shuttle and in a few seconds adrift he landed on the alien craft. Its emotionless silvery appearance said nothing of what that inside had done on the planet below. Aata attached the magnet with a nerve-wracking sound, and the other two men followed suit meticulously securing each crate with three points of contact. The final key part was upon them in opening each crate and inserting the detonators and attaching all the detonators to a radio to set them off remotely. The three men made their way back to the shuttle and closed the hatch and let the air back in.

As soon as the pilot’s module was open again Kai made a loud whisper as if he was afraid of the alien listening, “It’s started its engines!”

Magnetic drives could induce currents in wires miles away, and they just wired up more than a ton of explosives. They all broke their tense caution to strap in and Kai started moving the shuttle away. At that very moment, the alien was undoubtedly thinking of escaping the shuttle’s grasp by throttling up his main engine.

Explosions in space have no sound, but the inside of the shuttle was full of yelling and panic as it was hurled into space. The two pilots took several moments to get the shuttle to quit spinning in circles. After they gained their bearings, they surveyed the damage they had done. They had lost their main engine and Kai was radioing Hehu to come and rescue them, but the alien craft appeared wrecked with a gaping hole.

They had not planned for this, but Aata and the miners would investigate the alien ship and finish the job. Each man bore a pocketknife, Aata a crowbar, Wiremu an axe, and Rongo a large wrench. This small war party went out individually through the airlock and toward the hole.

Inside, they found the remains of a crew quarters vacated of air. In one corner there appeared to be a few square feet of carrots growing, frozen instantly by the evaporation of liquid in a vacuum. None of the bulkhead doors in the ship were closed, and one breach removed the air from all of them.

They moved towards the front of the ship, and Aata specifically gazed into the final door where he expected to find the alien ready to fight until the last. They clutched their weapons, and after an eternity of hesitation, they jumped inside and instinctively pulled aside the pilot’s chair to reveal… A man.

A dangerously thin man with a long beard and of a race they did not recognize, with the vacuum of space pulling his eyes from their sockets. They let their weapons drift loosely at their sides as they looked at their victim as they pondered the final solution to the mystery. However, Hehu came over the radio and said that Manaaki “had something to tell them.”

He said the computer had finally deciphered much of what the alien said using the many files he uncovered. He said the alien’s communication with them roughly translated to “I am Qassob, the last of my crew, I will trade this planet’s treasures for food.”

That was the end of the misadventure in Aata’s eyes. They buried Qassob and his victim with their fellow crewmates and carved a steel plate to serve as a tombstone for them all. They stripped the ship of its useful materials before starting their journey again to their new home. Aata and his crew would never learn where the doomed crew was from.