Joint Post by Lt Cmdr Pride (as npc Olixia), Lt Navine, and Dr Artopolis
Science Station, Bridge USS Potemkin
1209 words

From shear size and power, and a kind of elegant form, the breathtaking sight of the ten thousand kilometer long behemoth overtaking the lush planet was transfixing and Elli knew she could probably stand glued there watching, but shook herself free of the viewscreen visage, grabbing Doctor Artopolis by the elbow and shaking him too.

“Everyone’s about to start looking to us for answers,” she whispered. “Scott’s gonna want to know where to fire torpedoes into it if we don’t find another way. And something tells me anything we can lob at it would barely make that thing itch, anyway.”

Olixia stared at the sensor data coming in from the moon-sized creature. She pulled up the database for examples of other cosmozoan life forms to compare. “Maybe we could send a probe?” suggested the Bolian science officer. “I doubt it would even notice it.”

“A good idea.” Elli chuckled with agreement as she started an initiation on a sensor probe launch. She gave it a plotted trajectory to corkscrew around the beast so it could build an entire computer model of it, inside and out so far as it could aid in a scan of the thing. “I doubt it would even twitch if you established a colony right on it’s back!” Requesting permission to launch the probe, and getting a confirmation from Captain Pax, Elli began the sequence. “Launching sensor probe now.”

On the viewer, the slim form of the probe raced away from the ship, but as it became a pinpoint too small for the naked eye in the view screen, the insight it relayed back to ship sensors began to light up the science displays.

Olixia looked over the information coming back from the probe. “Our best bet for hurting it might be to get something inside,” she said. “Phasers and torpedoes might work against the shell, but it would take sustained bombardment to punch through.”

Elli bit her lip. She had a very bad feeling she was going to find herself alongside Scott, working on a makeshift bomb for the hapless creature. It made her stomach turn. She tugged the doctor’s sleeve again. “What do you think, Doc?”

The Chief Medical Officer stood quietly at the science station. He stared at the visual sensor imaging beneath him of the colossal life form. “Magnificent…” he breathed softly to himself, watching its near body-length arms articulate on a continental scale. The thumb of his right hand moved slowly up and down the other fingers in a silent rhythm while his left hand was busy operating the holographic console.

As if suddenly aware of the recent tug on his arm, Alexander turned to look at the others, then to Elli. “Oh, uh…” His right hand stopped fidgeting and returned to his side. “Yes, I do believe I see several points of interest along the outer…hull? Skin?” He closed his lips and thought for a moment before waving his hand and moving on. “There are several positions along the joints of the extendable arms that already have damage, likely from impacts or physical projectiles. They could be considered weak points for us to fire on. Unfortunately, there is a catch. The weak points are only exposed when the arms are extended, and I get the feeling the creature only extends its arms when right on top of its prey. It may be too late by that point.”

“That’s something to give to Tactical anyway. If it can be hobbled, maybe it will at least back off… Does it have a complex neurology?” Elli could identify the part of the scans that looked like a central nervous system, but she didn’t really know how it stacked up to other known neurobiology. “Does it think? Feel pain? I mean, it’s obviously hungry. Does it have some kind of senses?”

Alexander moved the scan window away from the standard position in the holographic console, holding it up and expanding it to a larger size. With his left index finger, he tapped and dragged until the main body beneath the legs was in focus. “It seems clear that it has a nervous system, and it appears to not have vertebrae. I would classify it as a supermassive arthropod…in space.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if that means it has a soul, in case your heart begins to bleed for it.”

To herself, Elli mocked Alexander, soundlessly mouthing the words: ‘You don’t have a soul’ and then crossed her arms.

There was a bump at her ankle, and Elli looked down to see Meme hovering there. A small flashing meant that Meme had completed an assigned task, and Elli bent down to accept a data chip from the ladybird-like bot. She stroked its head and it trilled a digitized purr. “Thanks, Meme. Keep the preliminary results coming.” She plugged in the chip and it added a fresh layer of file images to the rest of the science. “This is some of the early analysis from the organic residue samples I took in the landing crater. Obviously we’re working with centuries old samples from the last impact. But the lab was able to sequence DNA, run material analysis, and date it. Under all that asteroid build up on the exterior, it’s got a keratinized shell, which is what the samples came from, between the normally unexposed “toes” in the landing craters where it has no rock layers. That tough, organic shell is itself several kilometers thick. Except…” Elli ‘tapped’ in the air at the holoprojection, which made a simulated pointer highlight where she directed, “Except where it’s thinnest, in these gashes, where it looks like it took some kind of damage. Either it scraped itself against some kind of space knife, or else… there is something else big enough out there to grapple with it, is my guess.”

“Something bigger?” Olixia said in amazement. “I can’t even imagine…”

As they each continued their analysis, quiet settled for a few moments, until Elli piped up again. “Maybe there’s some kind of, I don’t know, something it avoids eating? Something we could use like putting too much pepper in its soup?” Elli knew she was just grasping, but they had time measured in days between this planet and the next considering the titan’s known top speed. “Maybe there’s some way we can pepper the space around the inhabited world so it stays off of the furniture.”

Olixia considered. “What is it using for propulsion?” she wondered. “Maybe we can negate the chemical reaction with an anticatalyst.”

Elli pushed away a set of overlapping scans and enlarged the image of the propulsion system. “It has a network of chemical input feeds which empty into a reaction chamber, forming a dense plasma core along this length here, which compresses through this…organ? And creates a propulsive force via this tail nozzle. The plasma could be hyper cooled with a Neutrino reaction, but,” Elli sighed, “short of tunneling a wormhole into its belly, I have no idea how to deliver an anticatalyst.”

“Maybe we can get it to eat a probe, like, hide it in its food,” Olixia mused.

Elli exchanged a smirk with the scientist. “How many kilotons of bacon will we need to wrap it in, do you think?”

~