[@jorcool]
A black box hovered in the grip of the tractor beam, small red hand-prints were smattered and smeared across its face. A clearing from the palms around the head-section instead held a sharp series of quick characters spelling out

"A Somnium anguibus
13LW: 6-011"

It held the dimensions of a casket, though crafted from sections of what may have been hull plating at one point, welded and bolted into place finished with a wrap of chain. A distress beacon appeared to be mounted onto its back along with what appeared to be a refrigeration system without the slightest hint of possessing any life-support capabilities. While it would have reeked of an improvised explosive device designed for just such an opportunity as being loaded onto a ship, a quick scan curiously came back reading the device to be hollow...and empty. The culprit of this reading was quickly apparent from the roughly fist-sized hole in the side of the box where a link of chain held slack from having one of its flat sides apparently bitten through. 

Somewhere in the ship, lights flicker down a hallway accompanied by a heavy scraping sound. Amidst it all arose faint conversations of sorts between three voices whose words and tones coiled between what sounded like a slurry of languages mashed together.
___________________________________________________________________
[@Hokum]
Aboard the Quatis mobile science station, a casket matching the aforementioned one materialized, bearing similar palm-prints and its own unique smear of words on its face.

"A Somnium Araneae
13LW: 6-045"

A wash of colors ran across the box, feeling into every angle and edge and returning with its nature, or at least approximations of it.
A mess of readings were fed onto screens, depicting the cases as having absurdly low carbon content in the metal it was made from, cut with some form of plastic which the elemental readout of was pocked with empty information. Unfound data curiously leaving a mystery as to what the box was made of besides the gilding along end edges and making up the hand-prints. Set into the box, each hand had a depth of nearly two inches into the mysterious black metal, including the words on its face.
Soon after arriving aboard the ship, a shimmering, translucent mist seeped from the edges of the case's seal, growing sharply in intensity as vibrant green lights pushed deeper into the box.

The contents billowed into the shielded room, flicks of energy arcing from the floor somewhere in the growing fog for a moment. Fingertips surfaced, palms following with arms from the surface of the cloud of shimmering black, meter by meter, arms reached into the air, some of which pausing to wrap around others with their dozens of varied joints. Upon the gentlest touch of the ceiling of the shield, a bolt of energy repulsed the first limb bask and the whole contents of the shielded sphere grew hauntingly still. The thin, mist-like tendrils of fog froze in place for palpable moments before a baleful wail of some low vocal chords being torn hoarse in instant shattered the tension. The fingers of the hands grew boney and sharp as they elongated with disgustingly reversed joints in some places as whatever it was that had emerged from the box furiously beat against the wall of the shield in the direction of the Quatis scientists. Eyes grated against the viewing station, teeth flowing from the corneas to screeching gnaw at the shield in a behavior akin to a worm attempting to dig in its undulations.
While scanners continued to run, the enraged and formless beast howled in desperate rage and agony while the shield stalwartly stood resolute in spite of the taxing drain of the entity's wave-like assault, writing back and forth to wash up against the viewing station's shielding, bringing with it hundreds of chattering mouths in hundreds more ambiguous voices.

Human...97% match.