by A. K. DuBoff
“Homey,” I said. The craft seemed entirely too small and vulnerable to travel on its own to a planet, extra hull plating or not.
“Are those bunk rooms?” Kaiden wondered aloud. He headed for the aft, seeming at home aboard the small vessel. He popped open the door on the port side, revealing a tiny room with a bunkbed. “Yep.” He closed the door and checked the one across from it, which I couldn’t see into from my vantage. “Same.”
“I hope we don’t have to spend the night in here,” Toran said.
“Better than out in the open on an alien world,” I countered. Another wave of nerves surged through me as it sunk in that I was on my way to another planet for the first time.
Toran nodded. “That’s true.”
With nervous anticipation, I wandered down the corridor toward the nose. Past the lavatory, the corridor opened into a compact bridge with two seats at the front and four additional seats at workstations around the back, each equipped with a flight harness. A broad viewport wrapped around the front of the bridge, offering a panoramic view of the hangar.
“No reason to delay,” Kaiden said, coming up behind me. He took one of the front seats. “Want to co-pilot?” he asked me.
My heart skipped a beat. My first time on a shuttle and I’d get to co-pilot? “I’d love to, but I have no idea what to do.”
“Don’t worry. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.” Kaiden’s calm tone set me at ease.
“This is probably a bad time to tell you I hate flying,” Toran grumbled as he entered the bridge through the corridor. His broad shoulders nearly brushed the side walls.
“Not ideal timing, no.” Kaiden smiled back at him. “But if what Tami said is true, this won’t be like any craft you’ve been on before.” He pressed some physical controls on a front console, and a holographic overlay appeared on the console and over the front viewport.
Kaiden opened a navigation menu and located an entry for ‘Master Archive’. “Ready to do this thing?” he asked us.
“Better go now before I change my mind,” I replied.
“Let’s get this over with,” Toran moaned. He strapped into one of the chairs at the back, then closed his eyes.
I secured my own harness. “This will be the first planet I’ve been to other than my homeworld.”
Kaiden glanced at me. “Really? Not even a trip offworld for vacation?”
“No, my family was more the camping sort.”
“I must have stopped by dozens of worlds at one point or another, but only set foot on a few. I guess after all of that travel growing up, that’s why I wanted to settle down somewhere.”
“Literally put down roots, eh?” I smirked.
He shook his head. “Ugh, I walked right into that one.”
Behind me, Toran groaned. “Elle, that was terrible.”
“Better get used to my wit and charm. I can do this all day!”
“So it begins…” Kaiden made a final entry on the front console, and the shuttle began gliding across the hangar toward an opening covered in an electrostatic shield.
Despite knowing it was ridiculous, I couldn’t help holding my breath as we passed through. A wave of yellow, crackling light passed over the front viewport, and then we were in complete blackness. Pinpoints of light shone in the distance, but from my vantage, we may as well have been completely alone in the void.
The shuttle arced to the port side on its programmed path, bringing the Evangiel into view. The ship was larger than I’d realized—close to half a kilometer long and at least fifteen decks tall. Based on my research in preparation for applying to Tactical School, the ship appeared to be of a cruiser class, designed more for speed than battle. However, energy weapons and rail guns were tucked away in recesses around the hull, so it could certainly put up a fight, if needed.
As the shuttle passed by the Evangiel, the front viewport tinted to block out the sudden light shining from the system’s star behind the purple-hued planet. Cloud cover made it impossible to see anything on the surface, especially on the night side.
The approach path took us to the leading edge of dawn. I braced myself as the shuttle angled toward the atmosphere, causing a bright point of heat to appear at the nose of the vessel. I kept waiting for violent shaking or intense g forces to kick in, but there was barely any sensation of movement.
“What’s taking so long to enter the atmosphere?” Toran asked behind me.
“We have.” Kaiden stated. “We’re at an elevation of eighty kilometers.”
I peeked over my shoulder at the large man, and he had cracked an eye open. “Huh. I guess those compensators really do work.”
“Nice ride, huh?” Kaiden kicked back in his seat with his hands behind his head. “I could almost take a nap.”
“After we’ve done what we came here to do,” I said. As much as I wanted to trust the autopilot, I really didn’t like the idea of the only person on the craft with significant flying experience dozing off.
“I’m joking,” he assured me. “I’m way too worried about what we’re going to find down there to relax.”
I was, too. The further we descended, the more my stomach tightened. I still couldn’t make out anything of the landscape below, and my mind kept going to all of the ancient, mythical monsters that might be waiting for us.
A shudder wracked the shuttle. The console turned red and a warning claxon echoed in the bridge.
My heart leaped into my throat. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Kaiden’s hands raced over the controls. “Shit! That’s very bad.”
“What?” Toran demanded from the back seat.
“The compensators are out and the guidance system lost its target. It’s flying blind.”
Concern added a quaver to Toran’s deep voice, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know! I wasn’t in control.” Kaiden swept his hand over the front console and pushed a map overlay onto the front viewport. He pointed to a blinking point on the map. “This looks like where we’re supposed to go.”
“Okay, then let’s go there,” I said.
Kaiden motioned out the viewport. “Yeah, except I have no idea where we are now.”
I knew next to nothing about ship controls, but even I could tell that the digital altimeter and GPS readouts were jumping all over the place.
“We should pull up,” I suggested, trying to stay calm despite my racing heart. “If the positioning works from the upper atmosphere, we can eyeball it from above and take an approach.”
“Won’t help,” he replied. “We’re already on the entry path I would have taken when flying us in manually. If we’re going to land this, we need to stay the course.”
“Might get a signal again at a lower altitude,” Toran said while gripping the armrests of his seat. “There’s a blind spot like this when entering Dunlore.”
“Let’s hope,” Kaiden murmured. “I think we’re somewhere around ten kilometers up now. There could be mountains.”
“Great.” I tightened the straps on my harness and gripped the armrests. This really wasn’t how or when I wanted to die. I pressed the comm activation point behind my ear, and it chirped. “Central Command, we’ve lost our nav lock.”
Silence.
“Central Command,” Toran said behind me. After a pause, he sighed. “Nothing. Whatever broke the lock and knocked out the compensators must be messing with the comms, too.”
“At least we were headed in the right direction,” Kaiden said. He pulled the manual yoke toward him, which had been locked at the base of the control console. The shuddering subsided a little as he leveled off.
“I wish these clouds would break,” he muttered.
“Try the docking guidance system,” Toran suggested. “The sensors use lasers to verify distances.”
“Not sure what kind of range that will get us, but better than being blind.” Kaiden located the appropriate system and activated it. “See
if you can pull up the readings, Elle.”
I grabbed the holographic of the data and dragged it toward me. It presently showed a schematic of the shuttle with a green border around it, but there were no other indicators. The menu offered no clues, but then I spotted a ‘Settings’ option. Flipping through that, I noticed an option for ‘Show actual distances’; that sounded promising.
As soon as I selected the setting, numbers appeared around the edges of the shuttle schematic. Behind and above only showed an infinity symbol, but to the forward starboard corner one number was counting down fast.
“Turn to port!” I shouted.
A rock face parted through the clouds two hundred meters ahead. The shuttle banked hard to port, and my harness dug into my shoulders.
Kaiden swore under his breath as he fought to get a new trajectory that would take us around the slope. “That was way too close.”
“This isn’t detailed, but it’s something.” I moved the schematic showing the distances back to the center display so Kaiden could see it while flying.
He glanced between the distances on the schematic and the map of the original course, which was floating at the top of the view. “We need to set down and get our bearings. I have no idea where we are.”
“Any option that involves not dying is good with me,” I said.
Kaiden kept an eye on the proximity readings until he found a path where the front and sides were clear and only the distance below was counting down.
Finally, at an altitude of one kilometer, the cloud cover thinned and we got our first look at the planet’s landscape. There was almost no vegetation or signs of water, with bizarre dark rock formations stretching as far as I could see. A mountain range towered in the distance, and the land dropped away other places into what I assumed were canyons. The path in front of us appeared to be fairly flat and free of potential hazards, but the shuttle bucked against strong winds.
“That lighter patch up ahead looks like a good landing spot?” he asked no one in particular while fighting to keep the shuttle level as the winds swirled around us.
“Sure,” I said, willing to agree to anything just to be back on solid ground.
The shuttle descended the remaining distance. As we neared the ground, I saw that the topography was more varied than I’d initially thought, with some of the seemingly smooth areas actually being boulder fields that reminded me of my home.
Kaiden selected a patch of gravel and set the shuttle down. With a relieved sigh, he shut off the engine, and the holographic overlay faded from the controls. “Yay! We didn’t die.”
“Good flying,” I told him.
“I do what I can.”
“Well, this mission is off to a great start.” I unbuckled my harness, my heartrate returning to normal. I pressed behind my ear to try the comms again. “Central Command?” Like before, there was no reply. “Okay, so we’re on our own.”
“Figured.” Kaiden sighed. “Good thinking on the docking sensors, Toran. Do you have piloting experience, too?”
The large man shook his head. “A little, but control systems were a required course as an engineering student. Glad I was paying attention in class!”
“Thank the stars for that,” I murmured. Even if we were out of communication with the main ship, I felt much better knowing my companions had experience to offer.
Toran smiled for a moment, then it faded. “So, how do we identify our position?”
“I was trying to figure that out,” Kaiden said while he pushed back from the console. “We might need to take the shuttle up and circle around. I’m not crazy about hanging out at a low altitude beneath the clouds with those strong winds, though.”
“What do we know about where we were going?” I asked.
Toran brought up the map from the original navigation plot using the console next to his seat. “It appears to be at the base of a valley between three peaks.”
“That kind of formation should be easy to identify from the ground, provided the peaks aren’t too hidden in the clouds,” Kaiden said.
With a clear course of action at hand, I jumped up from my seat. “Let’s head out!”
Toran frowned. “You might be a little too enthusiastic, given the situation.”
“First time on another planet, what can I say?”
“All right, lead the way,” Kaiden said.
“Have your weapon handy,” Toran cautioned. “We don’t know what may be out there.”
I kept my hand on my sword hilt as we exited the bridge into the common room. “Wait, the air is safe, right?”
“Pretty sure they wouldn’t have sent us down here without suits if we couldn’t breathe,” Kaiden pointed out.
“Clearly they don’t know everything about this place,” I countered.
Toran checked a panel next to the door. “Oxygen levels and temperature look okay.”
“Good enough for me.” Kaiden released the door lock.
6
The seal released with a hiss, and the hatch swung outward to form a ramp down.
A gust of warm air ruffled my hair, carrying an aroma of dirt and iron. “Something doesn’t feel right about this place.”
“Definitely not the most hospitable.” Kaiden motioned toward the hatch. “Do the honors, Elle.”
I peeked outside. Everything in the monotone landscape had a matte appearance in the diffused light; only the gravel beneath us had the slightest degree of sparkle. I’d always pictured other worlds to be vibrant and filled with strange plants, but the landscape around me was closer to a barren wasteland. I cautiously walked down the ramp, my excitement turning to nerves at the prospect of venturing out into the unknown.
I finished my descent and took my first steps on an alien world. An exhilarating tingle passed through as the sparkly gravel crunched underfoot. I grinned up at my companions. “I’m officially an interstellar traveler.”
Kaiden smiled back and descended the ramp. “Congratulations!”
I crouched to get a better look at the strange ground covering. “Is this crushed crystal?”
Kaiden bent down next to me and scooped up some of the gravel into his palm. “Huh. I think it is.”
Toran joined us on the ground, surveying the area. “This formation looks like too perfect a circle to be natural. Do you think it may be the result of weapons fire?”
Kaiden frowned. “Anything is possible. Who knows the last time someone may have been around this planet. It could be from a battle a millennium ago.”
“Kind of crazy to think about.” I stood up and scanned the horizon for any sign of the three peaks we were looking for.
“Maybe that battle is what prompted the ancient civilization to make the sanctuary around the Master Archive, in case another conflict happened,” Kaiden hypothesized.
“I could see that,” I agreed. “And that would explain why the Master Archive is hidden in the first place.”
“The power to control records of the past and potentially see the future. That seems very valuable,” Toran murmured.
“Do you think it’s true—about the Archive having a record of events that haven’t happened yet?” I asked.
Kaiden shrugged. “It sounds a little crazy, but having my consciousness downloaded into a bioprinted body also sounds mad.”
“I won’t discount anything unless I see compelling evidence to disregard it,” Toran stated. “The last few days have changed my views on what I previously thought were certainties.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I nudged the gravel with the toe of my boot; now that I was on the world, it didn’t seem very foreign at all. “Yesterday, the most important question on my mind was what classes I should take my first term at the Academy.”
“A week ago, I was taking soil samples as part of a new fertilizer study.” Kaiden laughed. “Stars, what happened to us?”
Toran shook his head. “I believe this is what’s meant when it’s sa
id that someone’s life has been turned upside down.”
“It certainly feels that way,” I muttered. The thrill of adventure I’d sensed on the shuttle was fading quickly now that I was on a barren world with little direction about how to complete our vague mission.
Kaiden straightened. “Hey, are those the peaks?” He pointed to the east.
I jogged over to him so I could follow the sightline of his arm. Just shy of the horizon, a collection of mountains rose from the surrounding landscape and disappeared into the cloud cover, with three peaks standing out as a slightly different shade of gray from the rest.
“That could be it,” I said. “I wish we could see the top.”
“Nothing we can do about that. These clouds aren’t going anywhere,” Kaiden replied.
“I can’t tell from here if the shade is different,” I continued. “If it is, it might indicate a different material and why those peaks were called out as landmarks on the map.”
Kaiden nodded. “Maybe if we could get a different angle it would show up differently.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Most of the area around us was flat, but to the south there was a low hill with several boulders near the top. “Maybe up there—” Before I’d finished my statement, Toran broke into a run toward the hill. “Where are you going?” I shouted after him.
“I want to see if I can lift that rock!” he called back.
“Is he serious?” I muttered.
Kaiden shrugged. “We did want to get in some practice with our abilities.”
“Yeah, that was before we crash-landed and—”
“Elle, just go with it. Trust me, you’ll go crazy if you try to control this situation. Consider yourself at the mercy of the universe’s will, and you’ll have a much better time.”
I stared at him, blinking slowly.
Kaiden grinned. “Race you to the top!” He took off full-speed after Toran.
I bolted after him, despite my better judgment about running headlong into the unknown. Reckless or not, I wasn’t about to let someone beat me in a footrace; running was one thing my shoulder injury hadn’t taken from me.