by M. D. Cooper
Sera pulled the feed and saw a long passageway that led to a pair of lift doors.
Sera mused.
Valerie sounded nervous, and Sera wondered what had the major on edge.
Sera glanced at Jason’s outline on her HUD, then nodded.
Fara set up a relay outside the lift, and then led her team inside.
Before the lift descended, Fara sent a filament of nano through its floor, putting a view of the shaft on the combat net.
The nano couldn’t get a read on the depth, just that it was over ten kilometers.
Sera and Jason walked toward the lifts, taking a position along the wall, while Pearson directed a pair of Marines to move a few hundred meters out onto the crater floor to set up surveillance systems, while directing another pair to patrol the exterior of the spire.
No one spoke as Fara’s team continued their long descent, though Jason did give a low whistle when they passed the hundred-kilometer mark.
The lift continued on until it had descended nearly a thousand kilometers into the planet. Readings from Fara’s team showed no significant increase in heat, meaning the core of the planet was not molten—or at least not where the shaft penetrated.
As he spoke, the lift began to slow, and Sera slaved her vision to Fara’s optics, watching as the team exited the lifts and fanned out into a circular chamber. Directly ahead stood a pair of large doors, and Fara approached them, rifle held ready.
The Marines stacked up around the door while Fara accessed the controls. A minute later they slid open, and the team rushed through, securing the next room.
What they saw caused Sera to suck in a sharp breath.
“What the hell?”
CORNERED
STELLAR DATE: 09.06.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: IPSS Deepening Night
REGION: Trensch System, Inner Praesepe Empire
Corsia screaming in her face seemed to snap Commander Eve back to full consciousness, and she rose on shaky legs to follow the AI as they ran further toward the bow of the ship.
“What the fuck,” Eve muttered when she finally regained the powers of speech. “Heavy combat mechs on a ship? They’re gonna hole it themselves.”
“Seems like those remnants really want to get their hands on us,” Corsia replied as they rounded a corner and nearly bowled over an enemy soldier. Corsia grabbed him by the neck, pushing his head back, and fired three shots under his chin with her pilfered rifle.
The man went down, and she grabbed his weapon before they took off once more.
“We need to find somewhere to hole up,” Eve said as they pulled open a hatch and slid down the ladder to the next deck.
“Agreed,” Corsia replied. “Preferably somewhere near the forward sensor array so we can hack it and get comms with our ships. I’d like to take Arthur and Larson alive. Learn what the hell the ASAIs are doing with the IPE…what strategic value can it hold for them?”
“Other than to deny it to us? I’ve no idea,” Eve said, slowing as they reached an intersection, and releasing a fresh passel of nano to scout ahead.
Corsia pondered the possibilities as the nanocloud began to spread out, highlighting nearby IPE personnel that were rushing to duty stations.
She spotted a clear path in the enemy’s movement patterns and directed Eve ahead. Though Corsia could trigger her skin to activate its stealth modes, Eve’s camouflage was compromised by the blood all over her uniform. Not to mention the fact that neither had stealth capable weapons.
For now, they’d have to rely on the nanocloud to mask their movements from internal sensors, and do their best to avoid the enemy’s Mark 1 eyeball.
As they skulked down the corridors, Corsia considered how unlikely it was that the ASAI would have two remnants in the IPE just to deny the ISF—or any others—access to ship-building resources.
Then another thought occurred to her.
She considered the variations they’d witnessed in the orbits of the three stars of the Trensch System. On their current trajectories, the only thing that would change is a few of the lagrange points in the system.
But what if the changes keep happening along the same course as they have thus far?
Corsia tasked a process with solving the three-body problem, and watched the gravitational shifts that occurred within the Trensch System and the cluster’s core.
“Shit…” she whispered a minute later.
“What is it?” Eve asked, glancing behind them. “Did you pick something up?”
“No,” Corsia said, while gesturing for Eve to move to the hatch that would lead them down another deck. “I think I know what the ASAIs are doing here.”
Eve waited for the nanocloud to slip around the edges of the hatch and into the level below, declaring it clear before she pulled it up and slid down the ladder.
“So what is it?”
“I think they’re going to collapse the stars of this system into a black hole.”
“What? Really?” Eve glanced up at Corsia as she slid down the ladder, landing silently on the deck below. “That won’t change anything, the mass of the system will just be concentrated in one place.”
“I don’t know why,” Corsia replied, as they crept along the empty corridor toward the forward sensor array—now just thirty meters further in, behind a maintenance panel. “I just know what. Maybe they saw what happened in Bollam’s World, and they’re going to try to suck in all the dark matter.”
Eve’s mouth hung open for a moment. “From the cluster?”
Corsia gestured for Eve to keep moving. “I’m just speculating. No matter what, it’s probably bad for the rest of us.”
The corridor ahead ended in a ‘T’, right at the access panel for the forward sensor array’s control system. Corsia was certain that once they reached it, she could breach the system and reach out to Sephira aboard the Andromeda.
The pair was five meters from the junction when the nanocloud alerted them to a pair of technicians walking down the corridor to the right.
Eve glanced at Corsia and nodded to her rifle.
Corsia shook her head, and handed her rifle to Eve, then motioned for the Marine to press herself flat against the bulkhead, while Corsia stood in front of her, and triggered her skin to shift from the appearance of a shipsuit to invisibility.
Her body didn’t perfectly mask Eve’s, but the Marine saw what Corsia was doing, and triggered her own armor’s stealth systems, keeping her left side out o
f view.
A tense few seconds passed as the IPE technicians reached the ‘T’ junction, paused, and then turned down the corridor toward Corsia and Eve.
Corsia clenched a fist, ready to take the enemies out as they passed, but the pair hurried by without even a sideways glance at the bulkhead where Corsia and Eve stood.
“That was close,” Eve whispered once the coast was clear.
“Yeah, pretty sure our rifles were visible between us.”
Eve took up a position at the ‘T’, ready for any further visitors, while Corsia pulled off the access panel, revealing a small NSAI node that controlled the forward sensors.
“Should only take a moment,” she said while placing a hand over a hard-Link port, feeding a tendril of nano into the system.
“Good, because we’re sitting ducks here,” Eve muttered.
Corsia nodded absently as she began to breach the NSAI node’s defenses. She worked slowly, not wanting to alert the system to her presence. The last thing they needed was for the IPE to spot a node under attack.
“Almost there,” she whispered.
Then Eve stiffened. “Too late,” the Marine muttered.
Corsia held back a curse as she saw the reason for Eve’s utterance. IPE Marines had appeared at the ends of each corridor forming the ‘T’ junction.
“Freeze! Step away from there!” a voice yelled, as the enemy Marines advanced toward Corsia and Eve.
BOLT HOLE
STELLAR DATE: 09.06.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Hidden Facility, Planet HH1
REGION: Hidey Hole System, Large Magellanic Cloud
Sera stepped off the lift with Jason at her side, glancing at him before striding across the circular room to the doors guarded by a pair of Marines.
She knew what the other side held, but still marveled at the sight when it met her.
Beyond the doors was a hallway with windows along one side, and those windows revealed a vast, hollow void, one thousand kilometers across.
The spherical space was at the center of the planet, but it wasn’t empty.
The first thing that crossed Sera’s mind as she stood at the window, looking down at the void beneath her, was that gravity was a touch higher here than it was on the surface.
That confirmed her suspicion that the hundred-kilometer-wide sphere she could see far below, positioned at the center of the planet, housed a black hole.
One that was likely spinning rapidly within layers of ferric materials, creating the world’s strong magnetic field, and protecting the contents of the void within the world.
Sera corrected her thinking. It wasn’t a void per se. It was half-full of stuff, but it was not sort of material one normally encountered in a planetary core.
Towers anchored to the black hole’s housing at the center of the planet stretched up in every direction, reaching to the rock ceiling above. Wrapped around every tower at ninety meter intervals were broad platforms, each covered in a dome that enclosed a different biome, filled with plant and animal life.
Fara added.
Sera tore her eyes away from the strange view before her and began to walk down the passageway, still glancing out the windows that lined either side, which were angled out to allow for a better view of the marvels below.
Sera replied.
Sera considered Jason’s words as they walked down the passage toward the C&C that Fara had marked on their HUDs, barely aware of the High Guard surrounding her.
What were you up to, Father? she wondered.
Sometimes it felt like the few decades she’d spent knowing her father had barely been enough time to scratch the surface of who he was…of what he’d done.
There were times Sera felt as though she’d not known him at all.
That uncertainty was further reinforced by stories Jason told of places he’d been in Alpha Centauri, many bearing the name ‘Tomlinson’—all in honor of her father.
The first FGT captain. The first person to travel out into the stars with the magnanimous vision of building worlds for humanity to spread to.
The Future Generation Terraformers.
She wondered how their grand vision had turned into two groups pitting the rest of humanity against one another, as they readied for the greatest war to ever sweep across the stars.
The father of hers who had led humanity down this path to war didn’t align with the one who had set out from Sol nearly seven thousand years ago.
Her musing was interrupted as they reached the C&C, and she stepped inside.
The room was a half-circle, angled down toward the planet’s core at forty-five degrees, the forward half having a transparent wall and floor that allowed for a near unobstructed view of the center of the planet.
Fara stood at one of the consoles, while the Marines in her team took up positions around the room.
She looked around, wondering where Flaherty was, and pinged him.
Valerie interrupted.
<’OK’ what?> Jason asked.
Sera walked toward the central console—the only one showing any activity—and saw that it was prompting for the presidential tokens.
Fara nodded and took a step back. Beside the promp
t was a hard-Link port, and a bioanalysis sleeve. Both systems required physical contact; wireless auth and remote DNA samples wouldn’t pass muster.
She altered her flesh to allow penetration by the sampling system, and slid her hand into the sleeve.
The console sent a signal across the hard-Link, prompting for Sera’s authorization tokens. She used the provided hashing algorithm, and generated a fresh token which she passed into the system.
The word ‘Verifying’ hung in front of her vision for a full ten seconds before it disappeared, replaced by ‘Accepted’.
All around them, the other consoles activated. Sera was about to make a triumphant statement, when the walls came alive.
REMNANTS
STELLAR DATE: 09.06.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: IPSS Deepening Night
REGION: Trensch System, Inner Praesepe Empire
Corsia replied, playing through every possible option—seeing none where either she or Eve would escape.
As she spoke, a shudder rippled through the ship’s deck, and Corsia saw an alert flash on the Deepening Night’s emergency broadcast network that the engines had been hit.
If it were humans they were dealing with, she would have been far more certain of how things would play out. With remnants? There was no way to know what their endgame was…what they’d sacrifice to see their goals achieved.
Corsia’s rifles were already leaning up against the bulkhead, and she set her sidearm down before stepping away from them, nodding for Eve to follow suit.