X-Calibur: The Descent

by Jackson-Lawrence, R.

  “Possibly,” Triltan replied. “It has living quarters as well as research equipment. Daltas’ crew were also her research team, so they’d want to stick together.”

  “Why couldn’t they do their research from the ship?” Gwen asked. “Why construct the laboratory in the first place?”

  “She must have had her reasons,” Triltan replied. “We should be able to access the records on the bridge.”

  The corridor began to slope upwards towards another solid white wall. As before, Triltan manipulated the flowing symbols and a door appeared before them, opening to reveal the bridge. Arthur was in awe, it was nothing like the cockpit on the scout ship. Chairs rose from the floor in sleek curves, a central chair with others lining the walls of the bridge to either side. There were no hard displays, but faint holograms flickered in the air around the chairs, displaying numbers and readouts. There was no window, but a large viewscreen made up the front of the bridge, displaying a perfect image of the domed laboratory in front of the ship.

  Triltan removed her helmet and sat on the central chair, looking left and right at the various images floating before her. “Sorry, I should have told you,” she said. “The air in here is fine, you can remove your helmets.”

  The others did as she suggested. They were hot and sweaty, Arthur and Gwen’s hair hanging limply as sweat trickled down their foreheads. “That’s better,” Arthur remarked. “It was beginning to smell like armpit in here.”

  As they watched, the images and readouts changed, flicking between maps and pictures of people. Triltan continued to look left and right, as though waiting for the correct image to appear.

  “Ah, here we are,” Triltan said at last.

  The readouts changed to show a Teleri face in close up. Triltan directed it to the main viewscreen, where it instantly replaced the view of the dome. “Her logs,” Triltan explained as the face began to speak.

  “Day one,” Silan Daltas’ image said from the viewscreen. “The planet is just as the records described, covered in a layer of ice, though I suspect it was once an ocean world. It’s incredible, the planet moves on an elliptical orbit that actually takes it between the two stars. It shouldn’t still be here, but it is.

  “Every time it moves between the two stars, the gravitational attraction between them should tear the planet apart, but that hasn’t happened. Something about this world is holding it together, and I believe that whatever that is will be the answer I’ve been searching for.”

  “I can see why she was so excited,” Gwen said.

  “Me too,” Triltan replied.

  “Day three,” Silan Daltas’ image continued. “We’ve gathered several samples from the surface, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. The nitrogen compounds within the ice suggest the planet may once have harboured life, but there’s no indication of any civilisation that may explain the unusual nature of the planet.

  “I’m convinced there’s something inside the core that’s holding it together. The tectonic scans have shown absolutely no activity, none whatsoever! I’ve never known a planet to have zero tectonic activity; I would have said it was impossible. I’ve checked the equipment and gone over the readings, but there’s no other explanation.

  “We need to go beneath the surface, past the ice and into the planet itself. I’m on to something here, I know I am. This is going to save us all.”

  “Day seven,” Silan Daltas’ image continued. The background was different, and it took a moment for them to realise that she was no longer on the bridge, but recording herself inside the domed laboratory. People were moving around behind her, carrying equipment or speaking amongst themselves as they examined large holographic displays.

  “It’s taken some time, but the laboratory is up and running and the drill has already passed through the first three thousand metres. We’re still drilling through ice, but we should reach something solid before long. The deeper we go, the more nitrogen compounds we’ve found, as well as some complex carbon based compounds. Some form of life almost certainly existed on this world at some point in the past, deep within the oceans.”

  “Day eleven. We’ve finally broken through the ice and reached a silicate based layer. Again, there’s nothing unusual in the samples that have come to the surface, but there’s still a way to go before we breach the upper mantle, if this planet even has such a thing.

  “Still no tectonic activity, even where we’re drilling, but we’ve begun to pick up some unusual heat signatures below the drill. They have some of the characteristics of magma, but then how do I explain the absence of tectonic activity? It could be a problem with the drilling equipment, heating the silicates and distorting the readings, but I’m reluctant to shut it down when we’re so close.”

  “Could they be the same heat signatures we spotted from orbit?” Arthur asked.

  “Maybe,” Gwen replied. “I suppose the life signs could have been the carbon samples too, I don’t know. Most of how the ship works is still beyond me.”

  “We should ask Merlin,” Lance suggested.

  “When we get back to the ship, we will,” Arthur promised.

  “Day seventeen,” Silan Daltas’ image continued. “The drill has broken through the deep silicate upper mantle and into a network of caves. They’re deeper than any I’ve ever encountered, and early scans are unable to locate the extent of the network. They may even spread throughout the lower mantle and into the core.

  “Within the walls of these caves are traces of a super-heavy element we’ve never seen before. I need to run more tests, but preliminary reports suggest this may be what we’ve been searching for; the answer to this planet’s resilience. The team are removing the drill and preparing the lift so we can study the caves in more detail. If this super-heavy element is as special as I think it is, Teela is saved!”

  “That’s everything?” Triltan said with surprise. “Where are the rest of the logs?” The others watched the holographic display as Triltan scoured through the records, looking for any more data from the laboratory.

  “Nothing?” Gwen asked.

  “No,” Triltan replied nervously. “Why wouldn’t there be any more?”

  “Try not to think the worst,” Lance said. “It could be a problem with the equipment, loss of communication between the lab and here.”

  “Either way, we need to get inside the lab,” Arthur suggested. “Triltan?”

  Triltan ignored them, scouring the files for anything more from the laboratory after Silan Daltas’ last log entry. There was nothing from Daltas or any of her crew, only the automatic security feeds relaying images of an empty laboratory. Triltan shut down the display and got anxiously to her feet.

  “Follow me,” she said. “We’ll cut through the cargo hold.”

  *****

  Triltan led them to the rear of the bridge, where a section of floor lowered itself into the cargo hold. It was a large open area, similar to the hangar on the Ardent Dawn with the same white floor. It was mostly empty, apart from a small collection of metallic crates at the far end.

  “Time to put our helmets back on,” Triltan said, leading them to the large double doors at the front of the craft. Unlike the airlock, the cargo hold had actual doors, not the liquid metal which flowed away when necessary. Once they were back inside their helmets, Triltan pressed a button a panel to the side of the doors and stepped back as they opened outwards, scraping against the ice.

  In front of them, the domed laboratory was larger than they had expected. Easily as tall as the Teleri vessel, it spread left and right, curving away from them towards the sides of the valley. Before them, lines in the ice showed where equipment had been removed from the cargo hold and used to build the lab or be placed inside.

  “This way,” Triltan said.

  It was only a hundred metres to the laboratory, and the airlock was placed opposite the cargo hold. Unlike the other Teleri devices they’d seen, the locking mechanism was mechanical, a large metal wheel in the middle of the door. O
nce Triltan had tried and failed to turn it, Arthur and Lance stepped forwards and rotated it easily, the airlock hissing as the outer door swung towards them.

  Once inside the airlock, they closed the door behind them, Lance spinning the wheel until it would turn no more. As on the Teleri vessel, a green light washed over them before the inner door swung open automatically, allowing them access to the rest of the lab. Triltan moved to go first until Arthur held her back. “Let me go first,” he said. “We don’t know what we’ll find.”

  “Okay,” Triltan replied, but her voice sounded uncertain.

  “I’ll wait with you,” Lance offered, which made Triltan feel a little easier.

  Arthur went first, Gwen close behind him. The airlock door led onto a metal walkway which appeared to run the circumference of the lab. Below the mesh of the walkway, the warmth inside the lab had melted the ice, the water clear beneath them.

  They followed the walkway around to the left until they found another door, leading into the centre of the lab. Arthur called Triltan forwards to open it before asking her step back, letting him be the first to enter the laboratory proper.

  The laboratory was larger than he expected as he stepped inside. The tall domed ceiling reached high above him, the walls white and the floor made up of the same silvery metal as the Teleri ships. In the centre of the lab, a large hole ten metres in diameter led to a perfectly smooth tunnel, which sloped down at an angle deep inside the planet. The tables and equipment surrounding the hole were in disarray, screens and analysers strewn across the floor. Glass vials of chemical reagents were smashed, their contents leaking onto the various surfaces, and a pool of a viscous black liquid had dried on the floor besides the hole.

  “There’s no one here,” Arthur said, stepping away from the door. “It’s okay to come inside.”

  Gwen came next, quickly followed by Triltan and then Lance. Triltan’s face was filled with horror at the sight of the room, but her attention was quickly drawn to the dried black liquid beside the hole. “It’s blood!” she cried, running towards it as quickly as her suit would allow. The others hurried along beside her, peering into the tunnel as Triltan placed her gloved hand on the dried blood.

  At first glance, the inside of the tunnel had looked perfectly smooth, but as they got closer they were able to make out hundreds of tiny scratches on the surface of the ice. The blood was smeared around the entrance as well as further into the tunnel, patches of it as far as they could make out.

  “Lance, Gwen,” Arthur said, stepping away from the hole. “Back to the ship. We’re not going any further without our weapons and armour.”

  Chapter 6

  The Descent

  Earth Year 6239

  Triltan was reluctant to leave the laboratory, but Arthur made it clear she didn’t have a choice. Something violent had happened to the scientists, and if she wanted their help in discovering just what, they weren’t going any further without their weapons.

  Once the gangway closed behind them, they removed their helmets and began to gather their armour and weapons from the lockers on the wall. “Oh dear,” Merlin said as he appeared in the entrance to the cockpit. “You look troubled. What happened in there?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Arthur replied. “Something unpleasant.”

  “My dear Triltan,” Merlin continued. “You have my deepest sympathies.”

  “No!” Triltan objected. “We don’t know that they’re dead. The blood, that was from one person, that’s all. Daltas had a team of fifteen scientists with her, they could still be alive.”

  Arthur and Gwen exchanged a look before Gwen said, “Maybe, Triltan, but you need to prepare yourself for the worst. We’ll check out the tunnel as far as we can, but the most important thing is to get the research back to your home world. If Silan Daltas was right, that element she found could save them all.”

  Triltan agreed with what Gwen was saying, but she had known Silan Daltas for many years and couldn’t accept that she could be gone. Besides, without Daltas’ expertise the element itself may not be enough, not in the time they had. She had to be alive, for all their sakes.

  “Merlin?” Lance asked. “The life signs the ship detected from orbit, can you work out what they are?”

  “I can try,” Merlin replied. “There was a lot of interference, but they didn’t match the Teleri as I recall.” As Merlin spoke, Triltan deflated, her resolve depleted. Gwen glared at Merlin.

  “Ah, yes, what I meant to say was,” Merlin continued, “the interference may have obscured the readings so as to make them unrecognisable as Teleri or anything else. All we know is that they were deep beneath the surface.”

  “Daltas’ logs?” Lance asked. “They mentioned carbon samples, something about life long ago on this planet. Could that be what they picked up?”

  “No,” Merlin said. “The scanners detect active biological processes, whatever it found is still alive.”

  Arthur nodded. Whatever had killed the Teleri in the lab looked to have come up the tunnel to do it, and probably more than one judging by the number of scratches along the tunnel wall. That must have been what the scanner detected. “Triltan, can you connect Merlin to the Teleri ship now?” Arthur asked.

  “Yes, why?” Triltan replied, thankful for being given something to do.

  “Merlin, I want you to go through everything you can find and transmit it back to the Assembly and Caran Doc,” Arthur continued. “They need to know about the element and what happened to the scientists here. We’ll investigate the tunnel as far as we can. Do you think you can contact us through the Teleri capsules?”

  “He can through the Daltas’ ship,” Triltan offered.

  “Good,” Arthur replied. “We’ll keep you updated on our progress.”

  “Good luck,” Merlin said. “And be safe, my King.”

  *****

  They bundled their weapons and armour into bags and dragged them across the frozen surface of the planet and back into the laboratory. Arthur went first, leading them from the airlock and corridor into the central room where the tunnel awaited them. He had come to view it differently, less like a curiosity and more like a threat, a large open mouth waiting to swallow them whole.

  “Merlin, can you hear me?” Arthur asked.

  “Loud and clear, my King,” Arthur replied.

  “Good,” Arthur continued. “Have you found anything useful in the records?”

  “Only the logs that you’ve already seen,” Merlin remarked. “There’s an enormous amount of data here, it’ll take me some time to analyse it all. I do believe the element Silan Daltas discovered could be the key to SYSTEM ERROR. SYSTEM FUNCTIONING AT EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT.”

  “Merlin? Merlin!” Arthur yelled, startling the others as they were changing.

  “Arthur, what’s wrong?” Gwen asked, her eyes wide.

  “It’s Merlin, he’s, I don’t know, he glitched again,” Arthur explained.

  “Merlin?” Lance said, activating his capsule with a thought.

  “Yes, Lancelot?” Merlin replied. “Is something wrong, you sound distressed?”

  “Arthur said you glitched?” Lance asked.

  “I did nothing of the sort!” Merlin exclaimed. “I merely told him how I’m yet to find anything useful in the records. Even a wizard of my calibre cannot perform miracles!”

  “Arthur, he doesn’t remember,” Lance whispered to the others.

  “Just like last time,” Arthur replied. “Gwen, Lance, you definitely heard him last time, right?”

  “Yes,” Gwen replied. “An error of some sort.”

  “Designation error,” Lance added. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Arthur replied. “This time it was a system error, eighty-four percent.”

  “Eighty-four percent of what?” Gwen said aloud, though the others knew as much as she did.

  “It sounds like a problem with his programming,” Triltan suggested. “The AI’s back on Teela have problems occasiona
lly, they all need maintenance.”

  “Merlin’s different,” Arthur insisted. “He isn’t just a computer. He told us he transferred his mind into a computer to keep him alive.”

  “Ah,” Triltan said with surprise. “There have been experiments, of course, but nothing very successful. How remarkable.”

  “But how do we help him?” Lance asked. “We have to help him.”

  “Arthur?” Merlin said through the capsule, interrupting their conversation. “Arthur, are you still there?”

  “Yes, Merlin, I’m here,” Arthur replied. “Are you okay?”

  “I am perfectly fine,” Merlin said, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “I don’t know what you think you heard, but I blame those Teleri capsule devices. The sooner you get them removed, the better as far as I’m concerned. A computer inside your brain, what a ridiculous idea.

  “As I said, I’ve found nothing in the records yet but I’ll keep searching. I’ve already sent the transmission to the Assembly and the Ardent Dawn.”

  “We’re worried about you, Merlin, that’s all,” Arthur said softly.

  “Thank you, Arthur,” Merlin replied. “I’m touched, really, but you have no reason to be concerned. I’m absolutely tip-top, you have my word.”

  “Okay, if you say so,” Arthur continued, though he didn’t sound convinced. “We’ll stay in touch for as long as we can, but the caverns are pretty deep inside the planet. Contact us if you find anything useful.”

  “Will do,” Merlin replied.

  *****

  They helped each other into their armour, securing straps and attaching weapons. Arthur, Lance and Gwen had their swords across their backs and a plasma pistol on their hip. Triltan had changed into a set of white armour, similar to the guards on the Ardent Dawn, and had a large Teleri rifle slung across her back.

  “Do you know how to use that?” Arthur asked as he watched her check various readouts on a panel on the weapon’s side.