The more she stared at the ridge, the more she smiled.
Will can go to hell. I’m glad I took this chance.
4
Day One
Anticipation complicated the task of opening the clasps on the back of the e-suit. Kerys grumbled under her breath as her fingers kept slipping off the plastic. The rest of the archaeology team, plus Corporal Mitchell and Private Foster, suited up with her in the ready room adjacent to the garage pod airlock. The din of idle conversation blurred with the clatter of locker doors and e-suit parts into a mess of meaningless sound.
Kerys paused to collect herself, barely able to stop bouncing on her toes from excess energy. History could be less than an hour away. She opened her e-suit, stepped into it, and shrugged the front up to her shoulders before sitting on a plain steel bench with her arms draped over her knees, waiting.
Corporal Mitchell walked up behind her and helped snug the suit closed. Molded panels of rigid armor pressed into Kerys’s chest. She adjusted it up a quarter-inch to fit better, before grasping the metal ring around her neck to keep it from digging into her throat. Mitchell secured the four fasteners around the armor, one at each shoulder and one on either side at the beltline. Each one closed with a faint squeak and click. After, the younger woman took a seat next to her and offered her back, smiling over her shoulder.
“Thanks, Corporal.” Kerys shifted sideways and got started on returning the favor.
“No problem… and it’s okay if you call me Gina.” She peered back over her shoulder, large brown eyes radiating nervousness. “You’re not enlisted, so it’s not like required or anything.”
Guess I get to be big sister again. Is this kid even twenty yet? She smiled. “Is this your first off-world post?”
“Yeah.” Gina looked down at her lap. “It’s cool though. Ain’t like I got no one missin’ me back home. The Corps is my family.”
“Sorry.” Kerys braced one hand on Gina’s shoulder and pushed the last clip closed. “There. All set.”
“Don’t be sorry. I came up in a shitty foster situation. Got my ass outta there when I turned sixteen. No one gonna save me but me, right? Street surfed a month or two ’fore I saw a recruitment ad. Didn’t even lie about my age. Told ’em I was on my own”―she winked―“ain’t as young as I look. Been three years now, but never got sent off-planet ’til this.”
Kerys offered a sympathetic look. “I still can’t get used to the whole freezing thing. So you’re nineteen but legally twenty-two now. If not for the pod, I’d be over thirty. I’ll take it. Cling to my twenties as long as I can.”
Gina laughed, flashing a genuine smile for a few seconds before looking away and down as if embarrassed.
On the other side of the room, Ellen and Lars geared up in their e-suits, then climbed into exoskeletons that made them both closer to ten feet tall. Ellen’s had numerous Hello Kitty stickers on it, plus an airbrushed one in the center of the chest plate. Both flexed their arms and walked back and forth as if running tests to make sure everything worked. The steady tromp-tromp-tromp of metal boots on the floor rattled the room.
“Is everyone about ready then?” asked Don from near the airlock.
“S’pose that’s our cue.” Gina stood and grasped her helmet in both hands. She exhaled, forced a smile, and put it on. Her rich brown skin vanished under the metallic blue plastic.
“Yeah.” Kerys packed her hair up and got her helmet on. Seconds after it made contact with the metal ring around her neck, tiny motors locked it in place and a faint hiss whispered at her ears. A list of names appeared along the left side of her visor, with Don and Private Foster in a sub-window outlined in green. Kerys stared at the login prompt in the sub-group, joining the private channel for her team. Within a second, ‘CPL Mitchell’ appeared below her name. “Gina, check me?”
Corporal Mitchell tugged and poked at Kerys’s suit for a moment before giving her a pat on the helmet and a thumbs up. She moved on to check Marco while Private Foster helped Paula. Kerys focused on breathing at a normal rate for a little while before walking over to where Don waited for everyone. The HUD lit his pale face yellow behind the visor.
“You look as excited as I am,” said Don.
Kerys grinned. “I can’t wait to see what’s in there. Three days we’ve been stuck sitting on our asses.”
He chuckled. “Like any other corporation, Avasar is worried about liability. They wanted to make sure everything checked out.”
Marco approached and gave Kerys a back pat. “Hey. You ready?”
“More than.” Kerys rubbed her hands together.
Paula, Foster, and Mitchell walked over with Ellen and Lars clomping up behind them.
Don nodded to them before pivoting to face everyone. “All right. Today is our first entry to the cavern. I’d like to focus on mapping out the structure of the place in situ before we start digging or burrowing into walls. We’ve been allotted the use of a Warthog, which will make things a little easier on us.”
“A what?” asked Marco.
“A Warthog. A small truck to carry us and our gear to the cave. It is, after all, 972 meters away from the outpost. I’m sure you don’t want to spend all day going back and forth on foot carrying our supplies.”
“Well, AV494 does have .94 Earth gravity, so it would be a little easier,” said Paula.
Marco held up his right hand as if swearing an oath. “I’ll take the vehicle.”
Don chuckled. “I thought you might. So again, today, please focus on mapping and scanning. We’ll be setting up the 3D modeler in the primary chamber. I trust you’ve all spent the past few days looking at the information I sent out?”
Paula and Marco nodded.
Kerys beamed. Don had gotten some video from the Avasar people, showing a short tunnel to a large, rectangular chamber with a longer hallway heading to the left at the midway point that linked to a smaller chamber. The westernmost wall of the secondary room showed signs of collapse, though rather than a structural issue, it had the foreboding appearance of something having tunneled in.
“Everyone’s suit’s reading green,” said Private Foster, a yellow dot glowing next to his name on her HUD in time with his voice.
“All right then. Let’s not waste any more time.” Don pressed a button that opened the inner door, revealing a large, square chamber.
Everyone hurried in. He hit another button, and the door closed behind them. Loud hissing filled the space, fading to silence within seconds. The red dot appeared at the top of her field of view. With a heavy clunk in the floor, the outer door parted down the middle and slid away to either side. Kerys followed the others out into a huge, square chamber.
Five small quad ATVs stood in front of shelves laden with tools, replacement parts, and batteries on the left. The center of the room held a pair of giant six-wheeled rovers with enclosed cabins and sloped front ends. Pale grey tires came up to her helmet, a clue they’d been designed for harsh terrain. Open space in front of them looked large enough to hold another pair of the giant trucks. The archaeology team’s gear, a cluster of white boxes, had been stored on shelves along the right wall, near a trio of vehicles that resembled tiny flatbed trucks. A cube-shaped cabin sat atop the front wheels, large enough for two people, in front of a ten by four-foot platform.
That must be the Warthog.
Its wheels only came up to her knee, but the trip to the excavation site didn’t require navigating huge rocks or uneven terrain, only a half-mile of razor-sharp beach sand. Marco’s hand on her shoulder snapped her out of a sudden waking dream of how she could die any of ten different ways between the door and the cave.
“Hey. Give us a hand, huh?” Marco nodded toward the shelves.
Kerys followed him around the Warthog, where Don went over the cases, tapping ones he identified as necessary for day one setup.
“It’s okay, Doc,” said Ellen. “We got this.”
Ellen and Lars tossed the hundred-plus-pound boxes around like sty
rofoam coolers. Marco shrugged, smiling at not having to do manual labor. It took under a minute for the pair to transfer the equipment, and once they’d finished, they headed off on foot to the excavation site. Private Foster climbed in to drive the flatbed, with Don and Paula squeezed together with him up front. Marco started to climb up on the back end, but Gina waved him down.
“We got the quads.” She pointed at the left wall. “Can’t let you ride on back. Safety reasons.”
“Oh, sweet.” Marco hurried across the garage and hopped on the nearest quad. “Used to have somethin’ like this back home.”
Kerys mounted the next four-wheeler and examined the handlebars. The controls seemed straightforward: an off-on button, two squeeze brakes, and the right handgrip twisted to accelerate. A tiny screen between the handlebars showed a compass heading as well as battery charge at ninety-two percent, estimating four hours and nineteen minutes of driving.
“Need a hand?” asked Gina, sidling up alongside. “Controls are pretty simple.”
Kerys flicked the button to ‘on.’ “I think I can figure it out. Looks kinda obvious.”
The warthog pulled away at a jogging pace, steering off in a gentle rightward arc after it passed the large door on the east face.
“Yeah, they’re pretty basic. Just be easy on the throttle. That stuff out there is like the fake snow they use for movies. You twist that thing too hard, the quad’ll burrow itself into the ground instead of going forward.”
She flicked her thumb at the rubberized grip. “Right. Got it.”
When Gina threw her leg over the next quad in line, Kerys walked hers backward away from the wall, then shifted the handlebars to point at the exit. The slightest twist at the right-side grip rocked the quad like one of the exo suits had kicked her from behind.
“Eep!” she yelled.
“Heh,” said Gina, chuckling. “Tellin’ you, these things wanna move.”
Kerys leaned her weight forward and let only the weight of her hand turn the grip. The quad lurched into motion, and within seconds, she bounced over waves in the black dunes. Her thighs grew sore from her legs’ death grip on the machine, but she ignored the discomfort, too worried about being thrown or flipping.
Ahead of her, a little more than a half-mile of hill separated Wayfarer Outpost from the ridge. The two exoskeletons trudged side by side in a bounding walk, kicking up small puffs of ebon dust whenever their huge feet touched down. The rocky hillside gleamed with a dull grey sheen like an enormous nugget of raw silicon. Faint azure mist shrouded the peaks, twisting in a high-altitude wind.
Nervous from the incline, Kerys kept her fingers clamped tight for fear of taking a spill over the handlebars. Her quad gained on the Warthog with ease, blowing by it as if stationary. Hurtling down the hill, she zoomed past Ellen and Lars, who waved. Before she could look back at them, she caught a few feet of air from a groove in the regolith.
Shit… shit… shit… The quad came down hard, but she kept it upright, skidding sideways for a few seconds before regaining control.
“Easy there, Loring,” said Don. “I know you’re eager to get started, but there’s no need to rush.”
“She’s from Cali. Thinks it’s a jetski,” said Marco, to chuckles.
“Uhh, this thing is a bit touchy.” She let off the accelerator, allowing the machine to coast.
Gina pulled up alongside her, a grin clear behind her yellow visor. “Once you get used to the handling, it’s easy. These things have gyroscopes, so it’s really hard to roll them. Relax, don’t drive like a jackass, and you’ll be fine. I know it feels like you’re going to tumble, but it won’t. It’ll throw you before it rolls.”
“Right.” Kerys looked back over her shoulder at the boxy Warthog plowing down the hill at the speed of a brisk walk. “Easier said…”
“Slow and easy,” said Gina.
Marco laughed. “I’ve heard that before.”
Don sighed over the comm.
Kerys stared up at the ridge, mesmerized by the metallic sheen of mountains rising higher and higher. As far as she could see to the right, the glimmering black ‘sand’ continued to the horizon. The hill blocked any view of the outpost behind her, causing a deepening feeling of being alone and isolated on a far-off world. Soon, aluminum struts holding up banks of spotlights came into view up ahead, their beams apparent as cones of swirling mist illuminating a rectangular opening.
Interest distracted her from worry, and she accelerated toward it, shifting her weight back and forth in an automatic reflex to the moving terrain. She stopped by the entrance, gazing open-mouthed at construction that could only have been the product of a conscious mind. Kerys flicked the ‘off’ switch and dismounted, drawn to the stone as if by a magical lure.
Gina and Marco pulled up on either side of her quad.
“This is… amazing.” Arm outstretched, Kerys walked over and touched the edge of the corridor. Perfectly smooth lines defined a doorway she estimated at twelve feet tall and five feet wide. The interior walls resembled dull mirrors, reflecting blurry swaths of color. “This is definitely not a natural formation.”
Marco trotted over. “Whoa. This is serious. Never saw anything this obvious before. Mostly broken fragments and such. I suppose aliens exist after all. ’Course, what if we’re like humanity that rose from the ashes after a way more advanced society blew itself up. Maybe humans made this ten thousand years ago.”
“Were that the case,” said Kerys, “we would’ve found some evidence suggesting humanity had regressed.”
“What about the pyramids, or that Mayan calendar stuff? We still don’t know how they did that. Think an older, collapsed human civilization is more likely than aliens coming to help?”
“I’m afraid I have to agree with Kerys here,” said Don over the comm channel. “Had an older human civilization annihilated itself and set us back to the Stone Age, there would’ve been far more evident clues of its existence.”
The Warthog pulled around a turn and backed up to the opening.
Don hopped out when it came to a stop, and approached the tunnel. “All right. I know you’re all eager to get inside, so let’s take a look around before we lug everything in.”
Kerys entered before he finished speaking, tracing her fingers across the wall to her left. The corridor grew dark after about ten paces. “Lights on.”
LED bar lights on her shoulders activated, sending two rectangular beams into the murk ahead. White specks swirled in the glow, which illuminated a carved door a short distance away. Two stone slabs, the same semi-shiny grey as the mountains, hung open wide enough to admit a person. Damage at the center where the doors met made her cringe.
“I wish they waited for us before breaking down the doors.” Kerys pushed at the slabs, opening them a little wider. Despite their size and likely weight, they glided without much effort.
“I’ve been studying images of those doors for hours,” said Paula. “I’m sure the patterning is decorative. It doesn’t seem like any form of language I can discern. I doubt they ruined anything important.”
“We’re here,” said Ellen. “Doc, you want us to start bringing your stuff in?”
Don turned to point his shoulder lights back at the opening. “Oh, I feel bad asking you to do all the work. My team can help.”
“Nah, man.” Lars laughed. “You guys are the smart ones. They pay us to pick stuff up and put it down.”
“Or break rocks,” said Ellen. “Don’t worry about it. Just tell me where you want the stuff. It’s not like it’s heavy. The exo-suits do all the work.”
Kerys stepped past the doors into a vast rectangular chamber. The walls had more of a natural cave look than the corridor, though the perfect flat ceiling dispelled any notion that this place had formed without the activity of living beings. Another passage opened near the midpoint of the left wall, leading to the secondary room. She approached the wall to the left, brushing at it with her fingers. Silt fell away from her touch, and after
a few seconds of pawing, she found hard, smooth stone a few inches deep.
“There’s a substantial buildup of sediment around the walls,” said Kerys.
Marco advanced to the right while Paula headed for the end opposite the entrance.
Don walked to the chamber’s center. “Well, I suppose this would be a good place for our gear if you two are still willing to carry it in.”
“Be right there,” said Ellen.
Kerys kept brushing at the wall, knocking silt away. Before long, grooves and ferrules appeared at about head level, suggesting a band of decorative engraving that went around the entire room. “Found something. More carvings.”
“Something intelligent definitely made this place,” said Paula.
“What do you think it is? A tomb?” Marco swatted his hands together to clear them of dust.
“That could be, though given the lack of any other detectable structures on the planet’s surface, I’m more inclined toward some kind of outpost. Maybe these beings were explorers like us.”
Heavy thudding emanated from the entrance passage.
Kerys glanced up as Ellen walked in carrying the giant case she’d helped Marco lug to the shuttle. Lars entered behind her, lugging two smaller ones, each only about four feet long. They set the gear down with care, and headed back outside.
“We should clear the walls before running the modeler,” said Kerys.
“Indeed.” Don opened one of the smaller cases. “Everyone grab a brush and let’s get going.”
Kerys retrieved a wide, soft brush, and returned to the spot she’d started. The others spread out to different parts of the room and set to the task of knocking the sediment away from the stone. She hummed to herself as she worked, grinning ear-to-ear. This is real. This is actual evidence of non-human life. It’s gotta be better than what we found on Copernicus.
Wayfarer: AV494 Page 6