The Star Agency (The Star Agency Chronicles)

by R. E. Weber

  It took a few seconds for the acceleration to die away, but once it had, Theo opened his eyes. Then, as he looked downwards, he wished he’d kept them shut. There below him, racing towards him at surprising speed, was the cratered brown surface of the planet Athonesis. And as his heart leapt into his mouth, he began to regret having accepted the mission.

  Chapter 16 – The Descent

  For a moment, as Theo stared down at the planet below racing up to meet him, everything was silent. Then gradually, he became aware of a faint rumbling noise as the pod began shudder from side to side. Within seconds, the rumble had changed to an almost deafening roar, with the pod shaking so violently that everything had become a blur, and Theo felt like every organ in his body was being shaken loose. A fiery orange glow was now enveloping the pod as it tore into the upper part of the world’s thin atmosphere, but instead of being held back behind an invisible shield, the fearsome glow seemed tearing away at the outer shell of the pod itself, only centimetres away from his skin. And the deceleration was so strong, he felt like his whole body was being squeezed into the bottom of the pod.

  It took several long minutes for the thundering and vibration to fade, but once it had and the fiery orange glow around the pod had vanished completely, Theo was able to see the planet’s surface in amazing detail once more. It was an ancient surface, peppered with craters, long jagged mountain ridges and deep valleys gouged out by countless meteor impacts and the shifting of the planet’s crust. From the various pictures he’d seen, it reminded Theo a little of Mars, although it was perhaps slightly darker in colour and, if anything, more heavily cratered. It was a desolate and yet spectacular world. And soon, within minutes, he would be landing on it.

  As Theo stared at the planet below, he began to wonder why his descent had been so loud and violent when all his previous journeys in transport pods had been so smooth and quiet? He knew that all Affinity vessels were fitted with inertial suppressors, which blocked any sense of acceleration or deceleration, even within the smallest transport pods. So why weren’t they being used now? And why had the shields seemingly been disabled? Then he thought about how the pod might have looked from the surface, streaking through the atmosphere with a fiery trail behind it. To a casual observer, it would have looked just like a meteor burning up in the atmosphere, and, with no detectable shields or inertial suppressors, there would have been no way to tell that it was anything else. Then he wondered if maybe that was the point. It made sense. He was, after all, on a mission for the Star Agency. And it probably wasn’t a good idea that everybody knew his business.

  Almost directly below, a long, deep canyon was opening up, and as he stared at it, he remembered his mission briefing and the simulation of his approach to the planet. And if he was seeing the canyon now, that meant he was closing in on the research station.

  Within seconds, the canyon had grown until it occupied nearly his entire field of view, and suddenly the sense of scale hit him. It was enormous, truly enormous, dwarfing even Earth’s own Grand Canyon. It was so deep that the bottom was hidden in shadow, almost as if the planet had been split open right down to its core. Even the advanced simulation in Star Agency command had failed to do it justice. It was truly huge, spectacular, exciting and frightening, all at the same time.

  In less than a minute, the familiar looking cliff edge was racing towards Theo, and he guessed that he was perhaps only a few thousand meters above the surface. Then suddenly, he felt the pod lurch violently to one side, and as he looked down he could see that his angle of approach had changed slightly. He was now heading towards a smooth patch of ground, perhaps a hundred meters behind the cliff edge. Then the surface, which only seconds before, had seemed to be coming up to meet him rather slowly, suddenly began to rush up at him at incredible speed. For a few seconds, he felt a massive surge of deceleration. Then there was a loud thud and a massive jolt as the pod slammed into the planet’s surface, and Theo felt his whole body convulse as a jarring pain shot up his spine. But the foam like cushion around him held him firm, and he was relieved to find that nothing seemed to have been broken. He was down on the ground and in one piece. Just about.

  For a moment, the pod sat upright and motionless in the ground. Then slowly, it began to sink down through the surface, like a knife slicing through butter. Within seconds, the pod had sunk completely beneath ground level, and all he could hear outside was a faint slopping noise – almost as if the ground had liquefied. He looked up to see if there was any daylight above, but there was absolutely nothing. The ground had closed in above him.

  For several seconds, the pod continued to sink through the rock, and all Theo could see around him was darkness. Then, as he looked down, he noticed a faint red glow coming from beneath his feet, and within seconds the light had risen up all around him. The pod seemed to work itself free of the rock and drop a few meters, hitting what sounded like a solid metal surface with a dull thud. Then it tilted slightly to one side and came to rest. Peering out through the transparent pod wall, Theo could see that he had dropped into a small room, dimly lit by a red strip light. He had, it seemed, arrived at the research station.

  Silently, the pod door zipped open and the walls cushioning Theo peeled away to release him. He stepped out of the pod and dropped about half a meter in low gravity onto a metallic floor, landing with a dull clunk. Relieved that his fiery descent to the planet’s surface was over, he took a slow, deep breath. The air was icy cold and a little stale, not at all like the clean, oxygen rich air he had breathed in the pod. Then he glanced around the small room. It was mostly empty, save for a stack of boxes in one corner. He guessed it was perhaps some sort of storage or utility room. Why he hadn’t just arrived in a pod berth, Theo wasn’t sure.

  He turned around to look back at the pod and noticed that around the bottom, where it was embedded in the floor, the metal looked warped, almost as if it had been melted. He bent down and held his hand just above the patch of warped metal. He couldn’t feel any radiating heat, so he gently touched it. Then he quickly pulled his hand away again. It wasn’t hot liked he’d imagined. It was cold. Freezing cold. So cold in fact, that for a moment he’d felt like his fingertips were going to stick to the metal. He looked up to see where the pod had come through the ceiling. There wasn’t much to see – just a circle of warped, discoloured metal. It obviously hadn’t melted its way through the rock to the research station; instead, it was almost as it had changed the density of the rock and just sunk through, like a stone sinking through treacle. He stood up, stepped back from the pod and, just for a moment, smiled. It was leaning slightly to one side, just how the first pod had been when he’d seen it back on Earth all those weeks ago. But all that seemed like a distant memory or a dream, like it was a lifetime ago.

  Theo looked around the room to see if the outline of a doorway had appeared, but the wall looked completely blank. Where was the exit? He walked over to the wall and gently touched the cold, smooth surface. Then he ran his fingertips slowly left and right, up and down, around every wall, feeling for any raised panels, buttons or edges. But after he’d checked every wall, he’d found nothing. The walls were perfectly smooth and featureless. He stepped back to the centre of the room and stared back at the wall. Surely it couldn’t be that difficult just to find the exit? It must have been marked in some way. But it was difficult to make anything out in the dim light.

  Dim Light. Smiling to himself, he opened his companion and selected Assist, Visual Enhancement, followed by Suppress, Normal vision. Immediately, everything became bathed in a bright blue light. He didn’t need to scan the entire room to find the exit. The clear outline of a doorway was right there in front of him. Theo sighed in relief. His chances of becoming a secret agent would have been pretty slim if he hadn’t been able to escape from a utility room.

  He walked over to the doorway and stared at it. It hadn’t disappeared into thin air like he was used to. Did it perhaps swing or push open? Or was it touch sensitive? Carefully,
he placed the palm of his hand flat on the wall inside the doorframe and held it there. Nothing. He placed both his hands on the inside edges of the doorframe and then gently began to push. At first nothing happened so, moving his feet backwards, he leaned into the door and pushed harder. Then it started to give and slowly a recession appeared in the wall. Using all his strength, he pushed again, and the door continued moving slowly backwards until it had slipped back about six centimetres into the wall. Then he felt it lock into place. He removed his hands and the door slid away quickly, revealing a corridor running from left to right. He’d escaped.

  Relieved, Theo walked through the doorway and looked down the corridor, which seemed to stretch for a hundred meters or so in either direction, without any obvious exits. Then he opened his companion:

  Locate, Location, Control Centre.

  Immediately, a glowing trail appeared on the floor, pointing him in the right direction. And so, with an excited grin on his face, Theo galloped off down the corridor.

  *

  A minute or so later, Theo found himself on a wide platform in the control centre, looking out across a split-level room about thirty meters square by about eight or nine meters high. Across the front of the platform, were several waist height pedestals, topped with angled, blank, grey panels. At the right hand edge of the platform, a set of steep narrow steps led down to the lower level, which also seemed to be lined with row upon row of similar panels, surrounding what looked like tables or work surfaces. Ahead, at the far side of the room, was a huge window, as high as the room itself and perhaps twenty meters across. And beyond the window was the planet’s surface, dusted with brown, sandy soil swept into tiny dunes, and dotted with half buried rocks.

  For a moment, Theo stared around him at the control centre. It wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Of course, it was in a low powered state due to the lockdown, so it wasn’t full of three-dimensional images, glowing information screens or context points. And naturally it was empty of people, save for himself. But there was something else too. In all the time since his arrival on Polisium, he’d never seen a flight of steps. It was all moving platforms and sliding walkways. And then there were the grey panels dotted all around the room; were they screens or displays of some sort? Were companion displays or context points not used for some reason? Then finally, there was the huge observation window in front of him, in which he could make out his own distant reflection. It was almost as if it were made of common or garden glass rather than the high tech invisible walls he had become used to. By Polisian standards, the research station looked quite primitive. Indeed, had he not known better, he could almost have been in a laboratory back on Earth.

  Then his thoughts returned to his briefing. You will be required to record all aspects of your mission via your companion. So he quickly turned on the Record function.

  ‘The Command Centre,’ he said out loud, almost as if he were a police detective describing the scene of a crime into a hand held recorder. ‘Looks Primitive by Affinity Standards.’ Then he felt a little stupid. Like they were going to want to listen to his idiotic commentary. Quickly, he switched Record off.

  What next? His first job was to locate the Direct Connect Node Port and connect to the node to kill the lockdown. He glanced around the platform at the pedestals around him. Was it one of those or something else? Then he noticed that behind the row of pedestals, around the edge of the platform, was a translucent barrier, perhaps a meter or so high, spanning the full width of the platform. In the centre of the barrier was a fat metallic cylinder, with a two centimetre square panel on the top. He enabled Identify and examined the top of the cylinder:

  Direct Connect Access Panel.

  At least that had been easy enough to find. He walked over to the cylinder and then touched the panel on the top, expecting it to burst into life. Nothing happened. Applying a little more pressure, he pushed down on the panel, which sunk about a centimetre before stopping. As he pulled his finger away, a narrow rectangular column rose up out of the cylinder. Theo looked closely at the column and noticed a tiny pin shaped object sticking out of the front near the top. It seemed to be about the right size to insert into his Direct Connect Companion Port on his headset, so he took the tip of the pin between his thumb and forefinger and pulled. The pin came away easily, trailing a thin, silvery wire behind it. He carried on pulling the pin and wire, and once he’d pulled it round to his Companion Port, he placed the fingers of his other hand around the port as a guide. Then he slid the pin slowly towards it. As the pin touched the port, he felt a slight tingling sensation through the headset as if a weak electric charge were passing through it. Holding the pin and the port firmly, he pushed them together and felt the pin click into place. The connection felt firm, so he took his hands away. The wire remained attached. He was connected and seemingly making good progress. Suddenly, he felt excited again. This mission was going to be a doddle.

  With his hands trembling, he tried to focus. He took a deep breath and paused for a few seconds to compose himself. Then he selected Port, Attach and Accept on his companion. The screen went blank for a few seconds, and then what looked like a pulsing green dot appeared in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. He selected the dot and a small window of text appeared:

  Status:

  Authorising

  Then it changed:

  Step engaged.

  Then:

  Authorised.

  Level four access granted

  Quickly, the status disappeared from his Companion to be replaced by his normal menu screen. Normal that was, except for one extra option:

  Lockdown

  Smiling to himself, he selected it. Then two further options appeared:

  Status

  Terminate

  Previous

  He selected Status:

  Research station in Lockdown due to code 2.3 alert.

  Previous

  He selected Previous, took a deep breath and then selected Terminate. For a moment, his companion screen went blank. Then, from the port on the side of his head, there was an intense burning sensation. Instinctively, Theo pulled the pin out of his headset. The end seemed to be blackened and charred and felt hot to the touch. He heard a clink as the charred Companion Port dropped off his headset and fell to the floor. Then, moments later, there was a succession of thudding noises as several white strip lights in the ceiling burst into life, brightly illuminating the room.

  Quickly, Theo turned off the Visual Enhancement from his companion and squinted. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the bright light, but slowly his normal vision returned and the room came into focus. Within seconds, the room began to feel warmer, so he unzipped his jacket and took a deep breath. Somehow, even the air felt cleaner.

  Pleased that he’d completed his primary mission so quickly, he stood for a moment to gather his thoughts. He knew what his next task was: To gather any evidence that might indicate how access to the facility was gained. But as he stared across at the observation window and the planet beyond, he found himself wondering about the research station and strange world he had landed on. Why had they built the station on such a remote and desolate world? And why did it seem to be using technology, which, by Affinity standards, was positively ancient?

  He stared out at the planet beyond, but due to the bright light from the room, which was being reflected in the huge window, it was difficult to see clearly, so he made his way down the steps to the lower level, and weaved through the banks of desks and panels until he was standing in front of the window. Then he pressed his face up to the glass so he could see the planet’s surface more clearly. Out beyond the loose rocks and sand, maybe ten to fifteen meters ahead, the ground seemed to end abruptly. Theo knew he was looking at the cliff edge, beyond which was a massive drop – perhaps several kilometres – to the canyon floor. He was relieved he couldn’t see straight down. Looking beyond the cliff edge, into the far distance, he could see the other side of the canyon: a shee
r cliff face plunging vertically away out of sight. Beyond the distant cliff, a gently rolling landscape seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon, which itself seemed unusually close. And above the horizon was the hazy distant sun, hanging low in the dull, salmon pink, dusty sky. It was an eerie landscape on a truly alien world.

  After staring mesmerised at the view for several minutes, Theo took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes and cheeks vigorously to bring himself back into the moment. He still had a mission to complete. He was just about to turn around and head back towards the platform on the upper level, when he happened to glance down and catch sight of something on the glass. It wasn’t much, but just for a moment it seemed to catch the light, so he sunk to his knees and then began to search for whatever it was. Then he spotted it, or rather them. A few centimetres from the bottom of the window were what looked for all the world like a series of scratch marks, almost as if somebody had been desperately scraping away at the glass with some sort of tool. Had somebody perhaps tried to cut their way through the glass? Or had it been accidentally damaged? He looked around to see if there were any more marks nearby, but apart from a few tiny pinpricks dotted around the floor, there didn’t seem to be any. Theo focussed closely on the marks, zoomed in and then turned on Identify. It took several seconds for the response to be displayed: