Hours spent sealed up in a stuffy data processing lab had worn Odie’s mental faculties down to a slurry. Nine hours had sluggishly passed since he and Nell returned from their space walk. Odie had toiled behind a desk which was shoved into a cramped room with no windows. A dim green-grey light washed the walls and server racks with a ghoulish hue that leeched away his energy. He plucked away at his keyboard which clicked like a piercing bell in his ear, slowly driving him to the edge of his sanity. He felt a noose tightening about his soul with each keystroke.
What had started as a simple repair report had been dragged out by a multitude of analyses requested by the engineering board, which amounted to basically nothing but a way for them to pat themselves on the back for not replacing old equipment.
The final table in his report sat depressingly empty at the bottom of its page. He began copying data cell by cell. Many laborious hours had crescendoed in the anticlimax of pasting numbers into boxes.
Upon the report’s completion, Odie hurriedly sent it off and within seconds he slid out of his chair and slumped into a ball under the desk. The few moments of consciousness before he slipped into numbing sleep were blissfully brief.
He awoke to pitch blackness. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. Minutes? Hours? It must have been long enough for the section to have been put into unoccupied mode. What had woken him? It had been sudden - some noise he had heard. Then, he heard it again. There was a hydronic hissing followed by an echoing metallic thud.
He sat up. BANG! His forehead bounced off the underside of the desk. Cursing, he scrambled to his feet and shuffled towards the door, guiding himself with a hand against the wall.
A muted mechanical hum vibrated through the wall. Odie knew the sound well - there was a vessel docking.
As his hand touched the door, he heard footsteps approaching outside. A few muffled voices came into earshot. There was an air vent at the bottom of the door. Odie knelt and peered through the slats in the vent.
“- cleared it an hour ago. Nobody has come or gone since,” a woman’s voice said.
“Good. Just make sure nobody is in the corridors leading back to the bridge before we leave,” a man responded.
Two pairs of black military boots marched past Odie’s peephole. The room beyond was seeped in shadow, lit only by the harsh emergency lights which followed the egress path to the exit door.
Odie waited a moment, listening for more footsteps. When none came, he gently turned the doorknob and cracked the door. Through the opening, he could see the observation window which faced the antechamber connected to the airlock and docking port.
Seems like you’re not supposed to be here. Don’t do anything that will get you in trouble.
Just then, the lights on the other side of the observation window flashed red, rhythmically pulsing on and off. There was a hissing sound as air evacuated the antechamber and an alarm began to sound. It was a depressurization warning. Odie found it odd, as usually the only reason the chamber would be depressurized was for the airlock to be opened.
Or if the docking vessel isn’t pressurized. Maybe there was an accident on one of the miners, and they are trying to keep it quiet?
It was the only explanation Odie could think of that made any sense. For a moment, he debated whether he should investigate further. He quickly decided it was worth looking into, as long as he wasn’t caught snooping around.
Gently pushing open the door, Odie kept low to the floor as he crept closer to the observation window. He took up position in an unlit corner of the room where he could easily duck behind a console to hide if needed.
Peaking over the main control board in front of the window, he had a direct line of sight to the sealed door which would open to the docked port.
As the hissing of the vacuum chamber dulled, a metallic groan echoed through the hull. The ship rumbled like a slumbering giant sighing in its sleep. Then there was silence. The antechamber lights stopped flashing and switched to a solid red, indicating complete depressurization.
The port gate silently slid up, revealing a round opening three feet in diameter. What Odie expected to see in this opening was the white-handled port hatch of a mining vessel. But that was not what he saw.
A chill ran up his back and his neck hairs stood on end. He began to shake as his stomach turned, warning him to leave before he could see anything else. He steeled himself, pushing down the urge to hide. If what was happening was what he thought was happening, he knew that he needed to watch.
When the gate had opened, Odie had seen a pitch black material in place of the white port hatch. Neither hinges nor seams were visible on the surface of the material. If it was meant to be a hatch, Odie saw no means to open it.
There was motion in the shadow of the port opening as the material twisted open like an elastic shutter. Odie’s skin crawled as he watched - the material reminding him of a wound held open by surgical retractors.
Something stirred within the hole. It was a mix of strange shapes which Odie could not make out at first. He thought it looked like a bowl of fleshy eels, but after a few seconds realized that he was looking at a mix of limbs folded over each other. He saw a kneecap, a forearm, a shin, an elbow, and eventually picked out a pinkish foot folded up under a thigh. The flesh was pale - paler than any he had ever seen.
Then, the limbs began to unfold. What appeared at first to have been several people squished together (as the arrangement of limbs did not seem to fit the human anatomy) was soon revealed to be only a single set of limbs belonging to one human shaped torso.
Slowly, the arms and legs extended through the port opening into the docking bay. As more of the vessel beyond the opening was revealed, Odie realized it could not have been more than a few feet wide in any direction. The whole body must have been crammed inside with a ram rod.
Despite the tightness of the opening, the figure moved effortlessly through the port hole in a slow, fluid motion. As knees and elbows extended past the lip of the port, the legs bent downward and arms upward, as if the shoulders had been twisted completely around in their sockets. Then the body was pulled through the opening.
As the full figure emerged into the space, Odie reminded himself the chamber had been depressurized. It was abundantly clear that Odie’s instinct upon seeing the port opening was correct - this was not human.
The figure had been strangely contorted to fit through the opening, and now untwisted itself like a marionette lifted up by its strings from the floor. Its anatomy appeared externally human, even more so as it untwisted itself. As it rose, its human face was revealed - high cheekbones, thin jawline, and a sharp chin: its head crowned with a short black crop of messy hair.
Such a perfect imitation, Odie thought, I would have no reason to question its authenticity if I had not just seen it twisted up like a jalebi on the floor.
As Odie had been watching from his hiding place, one word cycled through his head over and over. Now it found its way to his lips, and he silently mouthed it to himself - Andromech.
For over thirty years, there had been no documented encounters with the alien “species” - though Odie hesitated to formally define them as such. After the incident on Xia IX, their existence had become increasingly unpopular throughout the Republic as rumors, both founded and unfounded, began to spread - especially on the frontiers.
Odie marveled at the machine before him - something built to obfuscate and induce an empathy response in humans. Whether well intentioned or not, the mere fact that a faux human body of this complexity could be built was indication that humans were far outclassed by the Andromechs, and the mere presence of one aboard the ship carried with it a sense of existential dread.
And yet, Odie was in awe of the thing. What a beautiful achievement of engineering - something he couldn’t help but appreciate. He wished he could see the cogs turning under the skin so he could figure it all out. And there was also the amazing fact that he was probably the first person to see an Andromech in decades, and by complete happenstance.
In a few minutes, the chamber had been repressurized. As air filled the room, the Andromech’s chest began to heave as its artificial lungs filled with oxygen.
Our oxygen.
The thought only passed briefly through his mind, but it was a reminder of how precious a commodity oxygen had become since the beginning of their journey.
Once the room was safe, the red light turned green, and the side door opened. Three figures entered the chamber with the Andromech - two men and a woman. One of the men Odie recognized as First Mate Richard Fabian; the other man and woman wore black marine uniforms - members of the ship’s sparse but fierce security force. The male marine handed the Andromech a parcel of grey clothing. Fabian directed a few inaudible words towards the Andromech, and it gave a slight nod in response. The male marine made a motion indicating that the Andromech should follow him, and the group turned to exit the chamber.
Knowing this was his cue to make himself hidden, Odie curled up behind one of the consoles, cast in shadow and tucked in a corner of the room where nobody passing by would have line of sight with his hiding spot. His mind was filled with possibilities as to why an Andromech would be boarding their ship, and what would happen now that it was there. Like gallows, one thought loomed over the rest: if what people say about Andromechs is true, we all may soon be dead.
