by J. N. Chaney
“Apologies, sir,” said Sigmond. “Oh, how interesting…”
“What’s that?”
“It would seem Lieutenant Rackham desires a private line with you. Shall I patch him through?”
“Do it,” I said with a nod.
“I know you have your Cognitive stitched through to our suits,” Rackham said calmly. “I figure you want to keep tabs on us.”
“And?” I prodded, wishing he was a bit less smart.
“And that’s fair,” Rackham finished. “I really can’t blame you, considering your history with the Union.” He hesitated. “And considering what we witnessed upstairs.”
I turned to face the lieutenant, arms crossed as I studied him, wondering if he was playing a game with me or not. He merely watched me with that same unchanging glint in his eye, never giving me a damned thing to go on.
“Best of luck to you, Captain,” Rackham eventually said with a small nod. “Be careful out there.”
“And to you,” I said, not entirely sure if I meant it. The Union as a whole could rot for all I cared, but I surprisingly found myself on the fence about Oberon Rackham.
The lieutenant turned his back to me and signaled to his men, who fell quickly into line. It seemed as though he’d had a bit of a talking-to with them while we were loading Dressler’s finds on the ship, and whatever he’d said had whipped them back into shape. For now, anyway. Men like that had no spines and no loyalty except to themselves. I had to admit I was grateful not to be going into enemy territory with them watching my back, but Rackham was used to Union politics. It was clear the man knew exactly how to play the game—and the other players.
“Siggy, patch me through to the group comm again,” I ordered.
“Yes, sir,” said the Cognitive. “Go ahead when you’re ready.”
“Listen up,” I said, gripping my rifle as I spoke. “Stay in the perimeter of the Union’s new toy. That’s between one-hundred and twenty-five-hundred meters. Report on the comm if you find anything. Look for whatever you can steal that won’t slow you down, anything that looks like it might be valuable or important. A storage drive, a computer system, whatever. Gods know what the Celestials’ version of that is. I don’t care if it turns out to be a lunchbox once Dressler digs into it—for now, if you’re not sure about the value, just assume it’s all worth a grab. Understood?”
“Aye, Captain,” most of them said in unison.
“Good,” I replied. “Move out. Stay sharp. Try not to die.”
With that, we broke off toward our various branching halls, as ready as we would ever be to face whatever lay ahead.
14
A tense silence settled across my team as we made our way through Tunnel Two. This place was a metal labyrinth, the architecture perfectly uniform in every corridor we took. Every twist, every turn looked the same. The flawless, polished metal walls had no creases or slits in the surface, making for what appeared to be a single, smooth facade that went on for eternity. This was what I figured an insect must feel like, burrowing into the ground, carving a route through the dark in the hopes of finding an end to it all.
“Continuous scans have nothing to report, Captain,” said Sigmond. “The Union device remains unchanged.”
“Yeah, well, that don’t mean we should go and get comfy,” I said, the butt of my rifle digging into my shoulder.
“It’s odd,” remarked the Cognitive. “Despite my maps to give us ongoing guidance, our constant drone scans continue to show little to no results of the megastructure as a whole. Every sensor we have is acting as if most of the planet isn’t even here.”
“Great,” I muttered, even less confident than before at placing our safety and security in the hands of Union tech.
“I wonder what this place is,” said Freddie, his helmet tipping back as he the metal covering the ceiling above us. “Or what it was, I suppose, since it’s so empty. What brought it out this way? Why is it here?”
“And why was it abandoned?” added Petra.
“Don’t go getting comfortable with the idea that there ain’t no one home,” I cautioned. “You get comfortable, you let your guard down. You let your guard down, you die.”
“Thanks,” Abigail said wryly. “Good pep talk, Jace.”
“It’s true,” I insisted.
“This reminds me of Spiketown,” Bolin said quietly, referring to the colony where we had met him and saved his daughter from a life in a Sarkonian prison camp. “The silence in the old scrapyards at night. The tunnels below.” He paused. “We never knew who might’ve been watching.”
“Yeah,” I remarked, a bit surprised to realize he was right.
“It could be an outpost,” Dressler considered. “Maybe sent to survey a potential threat before the rest of the fleet is sent for extermination protocols.”
“You’re a real treat, Doc,” I said, frowning. “You know that? So perky. A real delight to have around.”
“It’s a valid hypothesis,” insisted Dressler, shrugging and adjusting her grip on the pack slung over her shoulder.
“Maybe it’s a warship,” said Freddie nervously as he scanned the empty hallway ahead of us.
“A warship with no warriors?” asked Abigail, lifting one skeptical eyebrow.
“Maybe they’re asleep,” he said.
Bolin laughed. “Sleeping? What, in a big pile at the core?”
Freddie shrugged. “We don’t know. This place is huge, so what if—”
“All right, that’s enough,” I interjected. “Let’s not get worked up over a whole lot of nothing. Bolin, let’s pick up the pace.”
“Aye, Captain,” the soldier said with a nod, his smile fading as he abruptly got to work.
“Sir,” said Sigmond through the comm in my ear. “If I might have a word?”
“Yeah, Siggy. What’s going on?”
“I’m having trouble maintaining the connection with Lieutenant Rackham and his men,” said the Cognitive. “It’s quite peculiar, but theirs is the only connection that cuts in and out. It’s as if there’s something blocking their signal at random intervals.”
I gritted my teeth at the news, not entirely sure of what to make of it. “You think they’re the ones blocking the signal?”
“Perhaps, sir,” admitted the Cognitive. “For all intents and purposes, Lieutenant Rackham seems to be complying with requests for additional information. It’s just that his replies cut in and out, and I’m unable to make out most of what he’s trying to say.”
I hesitated, and the soldiers around me paused, turning to face me they waited for orders. I debated my options—either Rackham was up to something that could compromise the mission, all in the name of bringing back a Celestial for Vick to carve up, or they were in trouble. I really wasn’t sure which one unnerved me the most.
“Sir?” asked Sigmond. “What would you like me to do?”
“I don’t want to go rushing off to babysit the Union,” I said. “Keep an eye on them. If you get anything useful or manage to re-establish a clear signal, you let me know right away.”
“Yes, sir.”
I pointed ahead of us. “Let’s keep moving.”
My team and I followed the corridor for another hundred meters, eventually coming to the fork in the path I had previously mentioned to Bolin. We paused when we reached it, and I half-expected to see something different. Different walls, or maybe even doors. So far, it had been nothing but the solid, unyielding walls of the corridor, and I hated having so few options should an ambush hit us.
“Should we take one of the hallways?” asked Bolin, pointing his rifle to the path on the left to emphasize the suggestion.
“No, not yet,” I said, frowning. “Something doesn’t feel right. For now, we stick together.”
“Sir,” said Sigmond. “It appears as though there is an anomaly nearby, roughly fifty meters away down the path to your right.”
“An anomaly?”
“Yes, sir,” said the Cognitive. “My scans have
discovered a distinct layout that varies significantly from the rest of the tunnels we’ve mapped so far. In addition, there seems to be some unique readings that I haven’t quite managed to pinpoint. I will continue attempting to decode them.”
“Well, that ain’t vague at all,” I muttered. “Send us over the updates when you have something.”
“At once, sir.”
Before I had a chance to pull up the maps, Abigail lifted her wrist and tapped a few keys on her suit. The small holo embedded in her suit’s forearm projected a three-dimensional map in front of her.
“Ain’t you helpful?” I asked, smirking.
She ignored me and returned her attention to the holo. “What is that?” asked Abigail as she pointed to a spot on the map ahead of the blue dot that indicated where we were in the corridors. Her finger hovered over a large square space unlike any of the other areas we’d passed so far.
“A room, perhaps?” suggested Freddie.
“It has no entry door,” Dressler pointed out. “There are no walls to contain it. It appears to be an alcove of some kind, or perhaps a storage unit.”
“With fancy, unreadable signals shooting out of it,” I muttered. “I say we take a quick peek.” I lifted my rifle as I led the way.
When we reached the anomaly, it true to form had no doors of any kind. There was simply a large gap in the hallway wall on our left that led into a large space as big as the Nebula Prospect itself. The room contained nothing, and only a few rectangular indentations on the otherwise flawlessly smooth walls gave any indication that this space had any unique value.
“What is this place used for?” asked Abigail as she lifted her chin, surveying the vast room around us.
“I got no idea, Abby,” I said, wondering the same thing. “This place is full of the sort of mysteries I’m altogether fond of solving, to be frank.”
We spread out across the room, each of us looking for anything of value or note. Dressler hovered near a small circular hole in one of the indentations, the metallic dip in the wall’s surface sitting above her head. She got on her toes again, which was becoming habit by now, and her eyes narrowed as she studied the irregularity, seemingly fascinated and confused all at once.
“Any theories, Doc?” I asked, adjusting my grip on the rifle in my hands as I kept a careful watch on the room around us.
For a moment, Dressler didn’t so much as move, and I wondered if she had perhaps not heard me. Science-types could get like this, sometimes—so consumed in their work that they forgot there was a whole other world around them. I took a few steps toward her, determined to figure out if this place was worth the time or if we needed to move on, when she finally stirred out of her daze. “This is nearly identical to what I found along the spine of the Celestial we killed on Earth.”
“Is it now?” I asked, intrigued and feeling like we were finally getting somewhere.
“It is,” she said with a nod, stepping back to study it from afar. “The Celestial ship also had something similar to this near its control panel and the door. I suspect it’s how the Celestial interacted with the ship.”
“Like how the Eternals and all of us have tattoos to interact with old Earth tech?” I asked, trying to piece together her theory.
“Precisely,” she said with a nod, pacing in front of the small metallic circle as she continued to study it from new angles. “I believe it may also be a terminal of some sort, which would imply it could have some data I can access.”
“Why would it be in a room like this?” asked Abigail, gesturing to the empty room around us. “There’s nothing here. Not even a door to protect it.”
“Maybe there was, once,” Dressler suggested with a flick of her hand at the vast nothing around us. “Truthfully, I have absolutely no idea. I could be wildly wrong, and perhaps this is just a waste of time. However, we’ll need far more information before I can make a hypothesis of any substance. For now, I suggest we simply try.”
“Can you get anything from that terminal, Doc?” I asked, nodding to the painfully plain circle.
“Maybe,” she said, not sounding altogether confident.
“Give it a shot,” I ordered. “The rest of you, spread out and look for others like this, or something else we might be able to drag back with us in Dressler’s bag. Stay close. Abby, Bolin, stay with me to guard the Doc.”
Instantly, my crew obeyed. As Freddie, Petra, and Bolin’s men fanned out, they began to slowly head toward the far wall, away from the corridor we’d just taken. Freddie and Petra hovered by a gap in the wall that led to another hallway, and he nodded once before they disappeared from view.
“Stay close,” I repeated into the group comm link, not altogether pleased they were no longer in my sight.
“Of course, Captain,” said Freddie. “There’s nothing back here so far. Just more of the same.”
“That doesn’t mean I like it,” I answered.
Bolin, Abigail, and I remained by Dressler to act as a guard and keep an eye on her progress. She slid her bag off her shoulder and rummaged through it, hunting for another set of wires and screens from the overflowing pack. Carefully, she hooked a shiny silver device into the terminal, frowning as her fingers typed furiously along the pad in her lap.
I kept my rifle at the ready, not one to get too comfortable in enemy territory. Now and then, I looked down at Dressler to make sure she didn’t get too carried away, as she was utterly consumed in her work. It was great when she uncovered important details, but it was less desirable when she lost track of time and had a little too much fun playing with her toys. I had to make sure every second was spent wisely, which was tough since I had little to no idea what the hell she was even doing. Frowning, her eye twitched as she stared at the screen in her lap. A moment later, though, it flashed green, and I caught the barest hint of a smile across her face.
Victory. It seemed as though the good doctor had granted us access—whatever that ended up meaning.
Symbols I didn’t recognize flashed across her screen, and her gaze quickly scanned each of them with focused knowing. A hint of excitement burned in her eyes, and I had to admit I was pleasantly surprised—for Dressler to show any emotion at all was a very good sign.
“You get something good, Doc?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she said, that look of excitement never leaving her face.
“Ah, peachy,” I said as Abigail and I shared a bemused glance. “Dressler’s having a field day while we all sit out in the open, waiting to get shot.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Dressler chided. “I’m downloading it and will send this to Titan at the earliest opportunity. I’m making a copy of everything I can find, anything at all I can get access to. It will take some deciphering to truly understand and decode, but this is promising.”
Good. I could grant her that. At this point, any information at all was a step in the right direction. If we’d stolen all of this data from one of their access terminals, it posed a good chance of teaching us much-needed secrets about the enemy. Maybe ones that were even big enough to turn the tide in a war—the kind that would make all this worthwhile.
“Siggy, give me an update on the others,” I said as I waited for Dressler to finish what seemed to be a massive intelligence download.
“Mr. Leif and his team are making excellent progress through the tunnels,” said Sigmond. “Thus far they have uncovered several strange objects, each of which seem to glow with an odd purple or blue light. No one is certain what they are, however.”
“Good work,” I said with a nod. “How deep are they?”
“Approaching the eight-hundred-meter range, sir,” said Sigmond. “Shall I tell them to loop back?”
I hesitated, wondering how far we needed to push this exploration. I didn’t want to go back empty handed, but I didn’t want to put anyone in added danger, either. “Yeah, bring them back. We’ll regroup shortly and decide what to do from there.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Begrudgingly so,” said Sigmond. “But yes, she and her team continue to monitor the hangars by the ships, as well as the Union soldier who remained behind to survey the device.”
“And Rackham?” I added, grinding my teeth at the idea of Union soldiers weaving through the hallways.
“Unfortunately, I’ve still been unable to maintain a connection with Lieutenant Rackham and his men,” said Sigmond. “Scans are inconclusive as well, but he seems to be roughly one thousand meters into his corridor.”
“Already?” I stiffened at the idea of Rackham and his men moving through the halls with such a focused mission. They were most definitely up to no good, and so help me I would cuff them all to a chair the moment we got back to the ships. “I don’t like that, Siggy.”
“Nor do I, sir,” confessed the Cognitive.
And there it was. The final knowing, for me, that Rackham was up to something. Sigmond could communicate with the other teams, and yet by some strange turn of events, I was supposed to believe Rackham and his men had the only faulty signals of us all?
I wasn’t buying it.
The megastructure interfered with our scans, sure, but the jammed signals on his team’s suits were clearly an isolated case. That meant the Union dogs were intentionally blocking Sigmond’s signal, and I didn’t like that one bit. Not with multiple ships sitting in the hangar, ripe for the stealing.
The thought of them swiping one or all of the ships and leaving us to rot on this floating metal ball sent cold dread clear to my toes, and I frankly wouldn’t have put it past them. I wanted to think better of Rackham, but such was life when it came to the Union.
I whistled sharply to get my crew’s attention. “Time to—”
“Everyone, come look!” said Freddie, excited. “I found something!”
I hesitated, wanting to get back to the ships sooner rather than later, but we had already come this far. I had a strong suspicion we wouldn’t be back near these parts, and this was probably our only shot at getting whatever it was Freddie had just found. I could indulge him with at least a quick look. “Siggy, you lock down those ships and warn Lucia about what’s happening with Rackham and his men,” I ordered.