Katherine woke to the beeping of her communicator.

  The number and frequency of beeping sounds could be used to communicate a number of things quickly. Long, slow repetitions meant a non-urgent communication: something like a request for a meeting, or an update on information that she had previously asked for.

  Two long beeps followed by two short ones meant that there was something that required her attention, but that held no immediate threat to life. Constant and fast beeping meant there was an emergency, something along the lines of the Ring being under attack.

  This alarm was a single longer tone, and then three short pips, indicating something that wasn’t an emergency yet but had the potential to be one. She rolled over and saw that the communication request came from the manager of Hangar G. That was a hangar reserved for the mining crews that travelled to and from the planets in the local solar system – it was rare for them to have anything to contact her for at all, given that most of the mining corporations self-regulated. Certainly she had never received a call this urgent.

  She answered the call. “Yes?”

  “General,” the voice of the hangar supervisor came through the speaker. Katherine could hear some kind of uproar in the background. “Sorry for waking you so early, General. I contacted your administrative staff and they elevated my call to you.”

  “What is it?” Katherine asked. She was busy searching for this supervisor’s name, but all that came into her head was Marlow, and she was sure that that wasn’t right because it was the name of the main character in the book she was reading and that would just have been too much of a coincidence.

  “An unmanned mining vessel found something on the moon of the second planet,” the supervisor explained. “A person. We think.”

  Katherine frowned. That moon should have been completely uninhabitable – years ago when the Empiridium had first conquered this solar system, that planet had become completely soaked in nuclear radiation. It had been over a thousand years since then, but organic lifeforms were still forbidden from stepping foot on the planet.

  “You mean Antze III?” Katherine clarified. “What do you mean a person, and why don’t you sound sure about it?”

  “We’re unclear what it is. It’s a life form, but none that anyone has ever seen before. We thought it was dead, but somehow it started moving in response to the mining ship’s probes. They brought it back to their ship.”

  “Has there been a full nuclear screening?” Katherine asked.

  “Their cargo bay is fully isolated in compliance with Empiridium regulations,” the supervisor confirmed. “Their ship has now returned to the hangar. Normally they would do a nuclear flush, but…”

  “But they can’t do that on a living creature,” Katherine said. “Okay. Make sure that all of the hangar staff, including the crew of that ship, undergo a full radiation protocol. Lock down the hangar, and I’ll send a team to extract the creature that you found.”

  “Of course, General.” The communication ended. Katherine rolled over and groaned. Still another three hours before she was supposed to start her day – it was somewhat expected for someone of her rank, but the older she got the less she felt able to jump out of bed whenever a situation began to form.

  She keyed in some directives on her communicator and sent commands to the appropriate teams. Technically she should start moving, but she knew that the radiation teams wouldn’t be able to complete a decontamination for at least half a day. She wouldn’t exactly be able to contribute to the scene much – an overseer like her would just get in the way.

  Katherine sighed at her own behaviour. She was justifying her own desire to stay in bed. When she was young, her mentor had often woken her several hours before her duties began, and then left her to do as she pleased. When she would go back to sleep, she would be told the next day that Fitz had spent the extra time perfecting various manoeuvres in the flight simulator. When she started to get up to take part in these extra lessons that Fitz had, she found out that they never existed in the first place.

  “But,” her mentor had said. “You would never have known if you had stayed in bed.”

  Something might happen with this entirely new lifeform. Even if it was the tiniest flicker of movement, a sound, even a heart palpitation, she wanted to be there to see it. She would catch up on sleep later.

  Hangar G was already in full lockdown procedures by the time she arrived. She was met at the door by the hangar supervisor (whose identification tag read Marla – she had been close) who led her towards the middle of the large hangar.

  As she approached, one of the radiation team saw her and flagged her down. The team wore a thick suit that made them look something like the old pictures of the first humans who had ventured from their planet. Except those suits had been primitive things, bulky due to the limited technology of the time. These suits were as large due to the need to repel any of the nineteen known varieties of radiation made throughout the universe. They were also dark grey, a sharp contrast to those early white suits, and emblazoned with the blue insignia of the Empiridium – an expanding sun – with the symbol of their station beneath.

  “General,” said the rad tech. The visor of the helmet rolled back to reveal a flat, fish-like face.

  “Ferrill,” said Katherine. “Tell me what you know so far.”

  “Not a lot,” said Ferrill. The suit spoke for her, as her species was unable to form the syllables necessary for conventional speech. “We’ve confirmed that no radiation has leaked from the ship in question – those mining vessels are good at that. We’re in the process of constructing an anti-rad barrier around the ship, at which point we’ll be able to enter and assess the inside. We’re coordinating with medical now to find the best way to bring the creature inside out for treatment. We’re currently optimistic, though. Even though our own scans can’t penetrate the ship’s hull, we’ve been able to link up with its computer, which is giving us the internal readings.”

  “Very good,” said Katherine. “How long do you expect all of this to take?”

  “A few hours at most, General,” said Ferrill. “Thank you for coming down – I can contact you if anything develops.”

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  “Well I’m here now,” said Katherine. “And I have a few hours before I need to do anything. I might as well stay around here. Do you need anything? Has your team eaten?”

  A slit opened between Ferrill’s eyes, which Katherine knew was their equivalent of a frown. “General, with all due respect, are you offering to get breakfast for my team?”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  “Well, it’s just…” Ferrill looked uncomfortable. “Generals don’t usually get breakfast for their radiation teams.”

  “I wasn’t going to get it myself,” Katherine said, a little quickly. She had in fact been planning to find a cafeteria, but Ferrill was right; that wasn’t what she was supposed to do. “I was going to have someone bring it to us.”

  Ferrill nodded, and their intra-eye slit closed. “Well, we’ve eaten, but I’m sure no-one would object to coffee. Thank you, General.”

  Katherine smiled. All the species of the universe, thousands of occupied planets and trillions of people, and it seemed like all of them loved coffee. The first thing that the Empiridium did when colonising a new planet was find or create the best conditions to grow coffee beans, and installations like the Ring would import it in the hundreds of tonnes.

  She keyed in an order, and waited for one of her assistants to appear with enough for everyone. She guessed that it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes, so she leant casually against the wall and watched Ferrill’s team work.

  Sometimes she felt a little jealous of teams like this one. Rather than having a million different things to worry about, they trained to do exactly one thing, and worked with the same small group of people for most of their professional lives. Of course, it was quite a dangerous job, but then again so was hers in theory.

  They worked with impressive efficiency, creating a metallic frame around the outside of the ship in question: a mid-sized, orange coloured cruiser with a three sided point that made up its cockpit and a large round cargo hold on the back. The team brought out a cloth and started to attach it to the frame. This, of course, was no ordinary cloth. It was an extremely absorbent material call Anti-Radiation, which would act like a vacuum for any ionising particles.

  “The beauty of it is that it doesn’t even have to be airtight,” Ferrill explained for her benefit. Katherine didn’t stop her, despite having read about this before. “That Anti-Radiation fabric is to ionising particles what a strong magnet is to metals. No radiation will be able to leave the area that we’ve created.”

  Once the radiation cage was finished, several members of the team pushed aside some of the flaps and stepped towards then ship. Ferrill guided Katherine to a screen that showed the point of view of the lead rad tech as they opened the ship’s entry hatch. The tech climbed a small ladder and into the ship’s dim interior.

  “Switching to sonar,” the tech said. The screen changed to a colourless model showing the projected view of the inside of the ship, created by the audio systems in the suit. The tech looked around, searching.

  Then they saw it. They yelped and jumped back. Katherine almost had a similar reaction herself, but she was trained to keep her composure even when surprised.

  The creature was about ten feet tall, far larger than most sapient Empiridium species. Though she couldn’t see its colour, the sonar was precise enough to show the texture of its skin, which appeared to be made up of multiple overlapping segments like a beetle. The skin was cracked in many places, with some kind of liquid that resembled blood spilling out and forming numerous blisters, likely as a result of the radiation. The head was rounded like a human, but the face had four eyes with two on the front an two more on the sides. In place of the mouth there was a single vertical slit.

  All of this wasn’t why she was so shocked. She was shocked because it was standing.

  The creature took a step towards the rad tech. It clearly had two arms and two legs, though each had an additional elbow or knee, and bent in odd ways. The tech scrambled backwards.

  “Kershe, it’s okay,” said Ferrill. “Just calmly disembark.”

  The creature’s face slit split open and three tentacular appendages emerged. They thrashed back and forth and the creature made a low wailing sound as it moved forwards.

  The rad tech screamed and bolted for the hatch. They made it out, but the creature followed. It pushed through the small hatch and dropped to the ground. Several rad techs greeted it in their gear.

  “Security!” Katherine yelled. Hangar security advanced, drawing their weapons. “Don’t fire unless I order!” she yelled. She strode towards the barrier.

  “General!” Ferrill grabbed her by the shoulder. “The radiation –“

  “The radiation is mostly within the ship and on the creature,” said Katherine. “And quite frankly, I’m curious to meet our visitor.”

  She pushed the flap of the barrier aside and finally saw the creature with her own eyes. Its skin was grey. It seemed anticlimactic.

  It was stumbling backwards and forwards, stopping every time it reached one of the Anti-Radiation walls and then trying another direction. The rad techs ran past Katherine, leaving her standing alone for a few seconds until security filed in behind her, weapons raised.

  “Put those down,” she insisted.

  “But General –“

  “I gave an order. This creature’s body type is similar to ours – if it has any kind of society then it probably has some understanding of body language, and I do not want to project hostility. So holster your weapons.”

  They did as she said. Katherine swallowed, hoping that she hadn’t just made a mistake. Three security officers who spent their time watching miners unload their cargo without weapons against a creature that looked like it could tear her in two with no effort. Those arms were nearly two feet in diameter.

  “Hello,” said Katherine.

  The creature turned to face her. She felt all four eyes examining her, though she couldn’t guess what it wanted.

  “I’m Katherine,” she said, keeping her voice low and soothing. She spread her arms, hoping to convey openness. “I want to help you.”

  The creature stared at her, so she repeated herself. “I…” she gestured to herself, “help you…” She gestured at the creature.

  It stepped slowly towards her, which she hoped was a friendly gesture. Part of her wanted to move away – the thing was practically swimming in radiation – but she didn’t want to make a bad impression. This was why diplomacy androids existed, to prevent these issues, but it was too late now.

  She ran through a series of gestures. A handshake, an outstretched hand, could be seen as a threat to a creature that had never seen one, and that could involve exposing herself. A hug could be seen as aggressive, and had the same problem. She did the only thing that she could think of and sat down on the floor.

  The creature looked down at her, then at the security officers.

  “Sit down,” Katherine told them.

  With some hesitation, they followed her instruction. The movement was enough to make Katherine grimace in pain from her leg wound, but once she was sitting it subsided to a dull ache.

  “Come on,” she said. “You can trust us.”

  She knew that very few dangerous creatures made themselves small. Most tried to make themselves larger, to intimidate their prey or predator. If the creature was smart, then perhaps it would see this, making herself smaller, as a sign of friendship.

  It dropped to the ground with a loud thump. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Tell the medical team to hurry up,” she said. “I think this one is going to be willing to play nice.”

  Soon, the medical team arrived, led by Seraphina. They had a special chamber with them that would remove all radiation from the creature inside it, but Katherine wondered whether her new friend would step inside. There was only one thing for it.

  “Come on,” she said. She stepped into the chamber, ignoring Seraphina’s amused grin. “It’s okay.”

  Luckily, the creature seemed to trust her. It moved forwards slowly and climbed in next to her. The chamber was quite small, and she found herself being pressed against the wall, but at least in here she had little chance of being affected by radiation.

  “Shut us in,” Katherine said.

  Seraphina shrugged. “Fine. But if that thing goes mad and crushes you against the wall, don’t come crying to me.”

  “Thank you, Seraphina,” said Katherine. “Very helpful.”

  She smiled up at the creature, hoping that it would see the gesture as a friendly one. It stuck a tentacle out towards her. She hoped that was a greeting.

  “You know,” she said to it. “I’m very glad I decided to get out of bed together.”

  The creature’s tentacle whipped back and forth, and she heard a low whistle. Perhaps it was saying the same back to her.