Black Knight

A Story by AlphaGemini

An astronaut on a top-secret mission makes a terrifying discovery

Black Knight

     Commander James Chen looked out into the vast abyss of space and time, and it looked back into him. Trillions of steady bright points of light spanning the entire visual universe beamed into his eyes. Not once in his lengthy career did he ever get tired of this view. Slowly and carefully he lowered his bulky, rounded vacuum helmet down level again, bringing into view the large bulk of SPARTAN 1 through the airlock door.
     The long black-on-white fuselage of the space shuttle stretched away from him and into the eternal night. The bright glowing blue rounded horizon of the earth was hundreds of kilometres below. Huge spiralling cloud fronts larger than countries dominated the sphere, obscuring much of the landmass below of what was northern China. Their friends at CNSA would have some very colourful language for them if they found out what they were doing up here. If the military didn’t merely shoot them out of the sky. So far up, however, they were nigh on undetectable.
     Their mission objective drifted lazily towards them across the empty gulf. A huge twisted and seemingly misshapen form of metallic material, larger than the space shuttle itself. An object of deep mystery and conspiracy, warranting the highest level of secrecy even within the higher echelons of the CIA, let alone NASA. The object labelled in the mission briefing as ‘Body 09-42A’ was more commonly known by another name; the Black Knight Satellite.
      In the year 1899, the great scientist Nikola Tesla inadvertently became the very first to perceive the strange inexplicable signal emanating from the object during his radio experiments. In 1928 an amateur radio operator, Jørgen Hals of Norway stumbled across the signal again. Both were discredited as interceptions of pulsars or distant planetary interference, and hurriedly swept under the rug, fading from public memory quickly due the efforts of certain governmental agencies.
     In 1954 the US Air force reported the detection of two satellites orbiting the earth at that time, though no country yet had the technology. Then in 1960 the US Navy also detected a similar object, believing it to be a soviet spy satellite. They discovered their error and reported the incident as an Air Force Discoverer VIII satellite that had gone missing, presumed malfunctioned. It was a cover story, of course.
     The accidental detections and public discoveries continued for years, all being ubiquitously managed by various agencies of the same nature. Then in 1998 the bombshell that could not be covered up. The leaked image of the satellite itself, taken during the STS-88 mission, the very first American flight up to begin construction on the International Space Station.
      The image, a foggy rendition of a solid black object hanging suspended above the earth sparked wild claims from a great deal many UFO enthusiast organisations and individual ‘experts’. So much so that the hysteria created its own illusion, a shield of hyperbole and implausibility that made the entire even seem as fallacy. An alien satellite broadcasting a signal from and to the earth in orbit for 13,000 years while humanity grew and developed below? Ridiculous. In the end, the truth was as good a cover as any lie because of how absurd it sounded.
      Now there they were. Spartan Team. Tasked with the very first manned mission to interact and study the thing. An initial contact scenario. Hurtling around the earth in synchronous polar orbit with the thing on what could have been the most important mission in space since the moon landing. And he was going to be the one to make first contact, so to speak.
     The helmet was stifling. To Chen’s dismay, sweat broke out on his brow in result of his nerves. His hands, encased in their thick insulated and shielded gloves, were wholly unable to wipe his brow. He wrinkled his forehead instead, trying to disperse the moisture. Across the shrinking gap, the dull black hull of the approaching thing gleamed metallically.
     As it drifted closer, there was a sharp chirp in his ear.
     ‘One thousand mikes out, J. Tether check and prep for thruster EVA’
     The voice, belonging to Commander Steve Heckles was steady and reassuring. He’d heard the very same monotone a thousand times during other flights and spacewalks. The mundanity of it helped keep him grounded. Perhaps this far above the earth though, that was a bad choice of words.
     Standing alone in the open airlock atop the body of the SPARTAN 1 shuttle, Chen checked over his tether and integral harness one more time. The large bulky white thruster pack he carried was hefty, but the only resistance in zero-g that he felt was the sluggishness of its momentum as he moved. Thick gloved fingers checked straps and the front mounted camera that adorned his chest. He was ready, but the flutter in his stomach suggested otherwise.
     As the gap closed and the shuttle gave a slight reverberation as the external manoeuvring thrusters fired, the black body of the floating object stilled its approach. They were now in synchronous orbit, ten meters out from the alien satellite. Chen took a deep breath, tinny sounding in the confines of the helmet. And with a thick white thumb, toggled the joystick on the control arm of the thruster pack.
     There was a sharp hiss, the sound carried through his suit by the kinetic connection to the pack, rather than the medium-less void outside. He floated up, then out of the airlock.
      A thousand times it seemed he had made similar such journeys. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d gone EVA to perform maintenance or repair on shuttles and orbiting satellites alike. Of course, all of those machines had been human. As Chen closed the gap between the two vehicles, he decided that this thing was most certainly not.
     Drawing nearer, the black sheen of the hull took on a matte colour, and he could see that the skin of the thing was in fact coated with thousands of tiny grooves and lines, fibrous like muscle tissue. The formation and function of such a thing he could only guess at.
     Five meters out he throttled back, coming to a slow stop a mere meter from the thing. 309 kilometres above the surface of the earth, suspended and travelling at a groundspeed of seventeen thousand miles per hour, Commander James Chen made first contact. Of a sort.
     Apart from the shallow grooves lining and criss-crossing the huge object there were no other traces of indentation, no sign of any kind of portal what so-ever. Gingerly, Chen reached out his right hand, letting go of the thruster pack controls, and with a stubby gloved finger, prodded the hull of the satellite.
     Nothing happened.
     He didn’t know what he was expecting to be honest, but something more than a simple piece of extra-terrestrial debris had been the entire point of the mission. It was, after all, emitting that enigmatic signal.
      Disappointed, Chen keyed his mic from the inside of his helmet with a click of the chin-button.
     ‘Chen to Heckles. Beginning external survey now.’
      ‘Copy, proceed commander.’ Came the sharp reply.
      Chen used the thruster joystick to turn ever so slightly to the left, giving him a good angular view over the lateral object. His right hand came up again and to the front of the suit, where the large box of the camera was suspended in front of his chest. He compressed the capture button on the high-definition radio-shielded device and there were a series of thunks as the shutter closed mechanically.
      Again he rotated with squirts of the thruster pack, ready to capture even more images of the right side this time. Maybe the eggheads stateside could decipher the meanings of the intricate patterns of grooves on the alien vehicle.
     Chen slowed his rotation to a stop and looked up.
      Another astronaut stood vertically upon the hull of the craft, mere meters away from him. It seemed as though they were glued by the feet to the hull, or as though the thing had asserted some form of gravity to keep them grounded upon it; though he quickly dismissed that as impossible. The stranger wore an exactly identical NASA designed and manufactured spacesuit as the one he wore, white and gleaming. Where the red and white insignia of the United States, and the Velcro name badge were on the front of the suit, there was merely blank white material. Chen’s blood turned to ice in a spasm of fear.
       Frantic, he keyed the chin-mic again.
       ‘Uh, guys? Did anyone else go EVA? Are you seeing this Spartan one?’
       There was nothing on the other end of the radio channel. No reply, simply dead air. The suited figure stood there, just away from him, the golden reflective visor of its sealed helmet pulled down, obscuring the face within entirely. Chen got the impression of being studied intently.
      The figure raised its right hand slowly, a hand that for all intents and purposes was identical to his own inside its thickly fingered glove. It flicked the obscuring gold visor upwards.
       There was no face beneath. Not one that was recognisable. No eyes, no nose, not ears nor chin. But there was something inside. A great head-like bulbous ball of flesh divided laterally by a wide, toothy maw.
      The fangs of the thing gleamed white. It opened its mouth in a snarling rictus of a roar. Rows of serrated, needle-like teeth showed down its gullet. It screamed, deep and loud in his ears. But somewhere, far away in his mind he knew he couldn’t hear the thing in the vacuum of space.
       It was his own yell he could hear in the tight confines of his helmet. He was the one screaming.