Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

body eased up from the command couch, and her tabulari said the ship was rapidly decelerating.
    “Options,” she said.
    “I don’t think they want to destroy us,” Varo said. “They could’ve flown us into the planet if they wanted to. I think they want to talk.” His voice trembled, and not with the same enthusiasm from a few minutes ago.
    “What do we say to them?”
    “Who says they want to talk?” Lucia asked. “What if they’re hungry?”
    “These are alien beings,” Varo said. “Their contact protocols could be as incomprehensible to us as ours will likely be to them. Perhaps they consider this a friendly gesture, that maybe they’re saving us power by flying us inside.”
    “Or,” Lucia said, “they don’t want us escaping to warn our people they exist. They drag us into their ship without even hailing us first? Doesn’t seem friendly no matter what species you are.”
    “If all they cared about was our escape,” Varo said, “they would have destroyed us. I still think they want to talk.”
    Ocella said, “It’s a good sign they didn’t blast us out of the sky, but we have to be ready for the fact they may not be friendly. We knew we might find a Muse-controlled species here. If they want to talk, we use the first-contact protocols we all learned in the academia.”
    “‘Identity, purpose, needs, plans,’” Varo quoted.  
    They were protocols all humans learned regarding first contact with intelligent aliens. First, establish a way to identify each other; determine the aliens’ purpose for being in its location, along with humans communicating their purpose; learn the aliens’ basic survival needs ; ascertain the aliens’ plans to secure their needs.  
    Lucia looked at Ocella. “If they’re not friendly?”
    Then Jupiter grant us a swift journey to Elysium. Her ship was unarmed, and each one of them only had a pulse pistol. They could not resist an alien race that could build an object like this and control her ship like a puppet.  
    Ocella’s silence conveyed her thoughts to Lucia, so Lucia frowned and stared at her useless tabulari.
    The cavern was pitch black for several minutes, but then a point of blue light in the far distance grew brighter the further they traveled. The end of the corridor soon became apparent—a wall covered in blue-lit veins. When they came within a hundred paces of the wall, the veins undulated and then concentrated around dozens of what looked like connector tubes covering the entire wall. The ship floated to one such tube. The connector was organic, chitinous, and glowed with blue veins. It was like a tentacle reaching out to them.
    Ocella flinched when the ship repositioned itself to align its nose with the alien connector tube.
    “How will it connect?” Lucia wondered aloud. Connector hatches and tubes across human space had been standardized for centuries, enabling every starship to connect with every other starship or way station.  
    No sooner had Lucia spoke when the tip of the connector tube grew and widened as it came closer. The hatch was below the command window and out of Ocella’s view, but she felt a thump as the connector attached itself to the ship.  
    “Seems to know how,” Ocella muttered.
    Varo said, “Hatch sensors say the connection is good. They’re even sending us power, gravity, and atmosphere.”
    Ocella’s tabulari said the air that the object was pushing into the ship was human standard.  
    If they can fly the ship, they can fake the scans.
    Lucia must have been thinking the same thing, for she unbuckled her couch straps and reached for her pressure helmet and air canisters. Ocella and Varo did the same. Within seconds, they all breathed air from their own pressure suits.
    Ocella’s tabulari flickered and then unlocked. She tapped a few displays and found she had full control of the ship again.  
    “I can get in,” Ocella said. “You two?”
    Lucia tapped her tabulari. “Flight controls are mine