Chapter 114: Post-Recovery Meeting

A team of doctors filed into the medbay first, followed closely by several nurses, the senior scientists, and a handful of Federation officials.

The group trailing the medical staff looked practically vibrating with excitement. It was obvious they had major news, but they were too polite or too intimidated to push past the Chief Medical Officer while Jason was still a patient. It didn’t take a genius to guess their excitement was directly tied to the alien artifacts the strike team had secured.

After enduring a thorough physical exam, Jason finally asked, “Doc, give it to me straight. How long was I out, and what’s the actual damage? No sugarcoating.”

The CMO sighed and shook his head. “When they brought you in, you had localized trauma to your chest, leg, and lungs. Those injuries were clean and superficial; they’ll heal in a few weeks. The real concern was your neurological data. Your brainwaves were violently erratic, similar to a massive, catastrophic concussion. We were looking at a very real risk of you slipping into a persistent vegetative state… yet, we found zero evidence of hemorrhaging or physical lesions.”

He paused, adjusting his glasses. “Modern medicine is practically useless against telepathic trauma. You were comatose for seven days, and then transitioned into normal REM sleep for another twenty-four hours. But seeing as you’re awake, lucid, and speaking normally, it appears you’ve bypassed the worst of it. Still, I strongly recommend we keep you under observation for a few more days.”

By the end of his report, the doctor’s tone had noticeably relaxed. It was an unspoken truth that if Jason hadn’t woken up on his own, the medical staff would have been completely out of options.

“Eight days in total…” Jason rubbed his temple, trying to shake the lingering stiffness. Suddenly, a realization hit him, and he sat bolt upright. “What’s the status on the UFO? Has the entity made a move? Have you quarantined the perimeter? No personnel or automated drones can go anywhere near that ship!”

“Captain, calm down. The perimeter is fully secured, and all assets have been evacuated,” a Federation officer quickly interjected. “All ten members of the strike team made it back to the flagship. Zero casualties.”

Through the officer’s debriefing, Jason slowly pieced together what had happened after he blacked out.

The exact second the four-man rescue team hauled him out of the breach, the psychic wave hit them. They were instantly hypnotized and began marching back into the dark against their will. Thankfully, because Shane had secured the high-tensile tethers, the perimeter team was able to physically drag them back.

“They were completely out of their minds, Captain. It was like fighting machines. We literally had to hook the tethers to the rover’s heavy winch just to pull them back out…”

Marcus picked up the story, a look of profound unease flashing across his face. “Those of us holding the perimeter got hit by the psychic bleed-out too. But because we were standing further back, we managed to grit our teeth and fight off the trance.”

“I jammed myself with so many K3 combat stims my heart is still skipping beats…” Marcus added with a forced chuckle, trying to downplay the severity of the situation so Jason wouldn’t worry.

The truth was far grittier. The perimeter team had resorted to violent self-harm, stabbing themselves with combat knives just to generate enough pain to stay conscious.

Despite his own leg wound, the hulking Marcus had practically carried three incapacitated men on his back, while the others dragged the rest. They scrambled down the platform and hauled ass to the rovers. Fortunately, they had pre-planned their exfiltration routes, allowing for a rapid tactical retreat.

“The psychic field was expanding. A lot of the automated excavators in the basin started going rogue. We had to manually override the rover’s autonomous driving systems and pilot them out of the hot zone by hand,” Shane added from the back of the room. “And don’t worry about the compromised drones… Command authorized a long-range missile strike to slag every rogue machine left in the basin. The area is sanitized.”

Jason listened intently, nodding slowly. “You all did good work.”

He noticed the fresh bandages wrapped tightly around Marcus’s thigh but decided not to comment on it.

Jason lowered his head, his mind racing. The tactical situation had just become infinitely more complicated. It was now confirmed that a highly aggressive, living extraterrestrial entity was barricaded inside the UFO. The Federation had to treat it very, very carefully.

They had been salvaging the UFO for over three months, securing a massive haul of advanced technology and raw data.

Jason knew they couldn’t afford to get greedy. What if the alien entity had a dead-man’s switch? What if it possessed the capability to take the entire Federation down with it? He remembered Calvin’s cryptic prophecy about “endless light.” What if the UFO still had the power to self-destruct?

Humanity had already secured enough tech to jumpstart a new era. Unless it was absolutely critical, they shouldn’t provoke the entity any further.

A middle-aged man stepped forward, a senior official from the Federation’s Department of Public Relations and continued the briefing.

The moment the strike team returned to the flagship, the waiting scientists, engineers, and military brass immediately quarantined and began analyzing the salvaged artifacts.

Shane’s sweep of the outer corridors hadn’t been in vain. The team had secured several strange, intact components and a few well-preserved mechanical arrays. The science division was practically frothing at the mouth.

“We’re looking at high-density energy cells, advanced circuit architecture, and unknown data storage mediums… We are going to reverse-engineer an astronomical amount of technology from this!”

“Captain, that jet-black sphere you secured?” An excitable cryptographer pushed his way to the front. He had clearly only come to the medbay to deliver this specific piece of news. “We believe it’s the core of a massive, centralized database, the alien equivalent of a master hard drive! We don’t know what’s encrypted inside yet, but our top cyber-warfare teams are already working on cracking it.”

A chorus of weapons engineers, material scientists, and physicists all started talking over each other, but their overarching message was the same: the artifacts salvaged from this mission were going to propel human technology forward not just by one level, but by centuries!

Jason didn’t say a word, merely nodding in silent approval. His mood steadily improved; nearly dying had actually been worth the payout!

While the briefing continued, the medical staff ran a final battery of tests, checking his blood panels, organ function, brainwaves, and resting heart rate. Once the diagnostics were clear, the CMO practically begged Jason to remain in the medbay for another week of observation.

Jason flat-out refused. He knew his own body; as long as his neurological functions were stable, the physical wounds were minor inconveniences. He had far too many critical decisions to make to stay confined to a hospital bed.

02:00 PM. The Federation Flagship Noah, Captain’s Quarters.

It was the first joint council meeting since the strike team’s return.

“I assume everyone in this room has reviewed the tactical footage?” Jason began, standing at the head of the conference table. “Although the visual is distant and partially obscured by the containment tank, that massive, organic entity is officially humanity’s first confirmed contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.”

“While I was unconscious, I’m sure your teams analyzed the data a thousand times over. The entity is highly intelligent, sentient, and has clearly learned our language by intercepting our communicator. My first question to this council is simple: does it still pose an active threat to the Federation?”

Below him sat the surviving members of the strike team, the heads of the Security Division, Austin, the senior Department Heads, and various Federation senators.

Jason leaned forward, resting his knuckles on the table. “My second question: does it possess the capability to transmit a distress signal to its own kind? We all know that if a true Interstellar Civilization arrives in this system, humanity will be swatted like insects. Do we need to break orbit and run right now?”

The atmosphere in the room was razor-thin. If the entity could broadcast an SOS into deep space, humanity was facing an extinction-level event.

That was the nightmare keeping the command staff awake.

They couldn’t just drop a nuclear warhead on the crash site. Killing the entity didn’t solve the core problem; the Federation wasn’t afraid of the fleshy mass trapped in the tank. They were terrified of the Interstellar Fleet that might come looking for it.

The council remained dead silent. Finally, a senior scientist seated on the far left stood up. “Captain, based on your combat telemetry and the strike team’s debriefs, this spherical entity… let’s designate it as ’Hostile Alpha’… appears to utilize highly advanced electromagnetic and telepathic frequencies as its primary offensive capability.”

“It can directly hijack the human nervous system, overriding conscious thought, and it can use those same electromagnetic frequencies to rewrite the programming of our automated systems. Any drone with a basic VI can be enslaved.”

“However,” the scientist noted, tapping a datapad, “its signal output is relatively weak, and its effective range is highly limited… Furthermore, heavy radiation shielding seems to partially degrade its telepathic penetration.”

Calvin stood up, nodding in agreement. “When we were exfiltrating in the rovers, we could still feel the psychic drag trying to pull us back. Because I was relatively lucid, I took the wheel. Once we drove roughly 20 to 30 kilometers away from the crash site, the hypnotic pressure completely vanished.”

“In other words, the safe zone begins approximately 30 kilometers outside the UFO’s perimeter.”

Jason frowned slightly, calculating the logistics, before his expression smoothed out into steely resolve. “Thirty kilometers. Understood. We’ve already strip-mined the nearest uranium deposits, and we’ve successfully salvaged the most critical technology from the outer hull.”

He looked around the room, his voice brokering no argument. “Effective immediately, no Federation personnel or assets are to approach that UFO.”

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