by Richard Fox
The two frames blinked off.
“You can piece together the story up until now,” Gideon said. “The Kesaht landed troops on Oricon and the Ibarras fought a running battle for three days until our fleet arrived. Fleet intelligence went looking through the data the Ibarras asked for and found it had been accessed not long after we arrived.”
“The Ibarras put spies on the moon,” Roland said. “They must have landed them along with their legionnaires.”
“Not just the moon,” Gideon said. “An infiltrator’s been discovered on the fleet. Intelligence thinks there’s a significant risk of there being more spies, or sleeper agents, within the fleet’s proccie crew.”
“But the true born aren’t suspect,” Roland said. “That’s why the admiral’s sent the armor on this mission? We can be trusted.”
“That wasn’t put out in the mission order,” Gideon said, “but I agree with your assessment.”
Aignar looked down at the hilt on Roland’s leg.
“The fleet’s computer techs found that the data the Ibarran commander demanded was no longer encrypted at all. The storage units were a bit older…and built by the Ibarra Corporation,” Gideon said.
“They built themselves a back door into the system,” Cha’ril said.
“The data was from a probe doing deep radar scans of the gas giant,” Gideon said. The holo zoomed to the north pole, an ivory white storm several times the size of Earth. A blinking black square appeared near the center.
“What is it?” Roland asked.
“An anomaly is all we know right now,” Gideon said. “From what the probe could detect, it out-masses the Crucible gates and there’s probably more of it beneath the storm layer.”
“It must be an artifact of a dead species,” Aignar said. “Nothing like that has ever been found in a gas giant. The gravity, and…this was buried in a report for bean counters on Earth to look at? I thought the Path Finder Corps would jump all over this.”
“The probe’s software classified it as an error,” Gideon said. “How the Ibarras learned about it before the data scrubbers on Earth begs a number of questions.”
“More spies,” Roland muttered.
“Soon after the Ibarrans accessed the data, their fleet changed course for Oricon Prime.” Gideon zoomed in closer on the anomaly. A grainy black dome appeared in the snow-white storm.
“We don’t have as far to go and are faster. Captain Tagawa is certain we’ll beat the Ibarras to the finish line. Our mission is to secure the artifact. Prevent the Ibarras from leaving with anything of value.”
“How would the Ibarras get away with it?” Aignar asked. “Damn thing’s bigger than the Crucible gate.”
“Such structures have been encountered before,” Gideon said. A holo of a sphere with circular gaps in the surface appeared. Beneath the outer layer spun a similar inner shell, beneath that was another, and another. “Qa’Resh primogenitor technology.”
“That’s what the Vishrakath were after on Barada,” Roland said. “They risked a full-scale war for it.”
“That was a fragment. This…is considerably more,” Gideon said.
“Turn it off,” Cha’ril said. “It makes my head hurt.”
The spinning object faded away.
“Admiral Lettow will move the entire fleet to secure the area once the Crucible is repaired and reinforcements from Earth arrive,” Gideon said. “The Ibarras don’t have the ships to stand up to our line, but he’s not going to risk leaving the gate vulnerable and them locking us into the system again. The corvettes will insert us into the relict. Then we hold tight until the fleet arrives.”
“And if we encounter the Ibarras?” Roland asked.
“Our orders remain. They surrender or they will be destroyed.”
****
The Scipio rocked as it descended through the polar storm. Roland had his feet locked to the deck, looking down through the ship’s hellhole and into what looked like a blizzard raging just beneath the ship. The rest of the Dragoons formed a circle with him around the hole.
“Think we should ask Captain Tagawa how she’s doing on the bridge?” Aignar asked. “I feel like we’re in a Mule flying through a hurricane.”
“I think she was dead serious about ripping your head off and defecating down your neck if you bothered her again,” Cha’ril said.
“Scipio’s a good ship,” Gideon said. “Trust her and her crew.”
“Easy to trust when you’re just along for the ride,” Aignar said. “Not like you have any other options.”
The ship wobbled from side to side. A supply crate broke loose from its moorings and went skidding across the deck at Roland. He slapped a hand down and stopped it dead in its tracks.
Roland looked up, then shifted his weight from foot to foot. The turbulence was gone.
“Landing zone in sight,” Gideon said.
Through the hellhole, an azure plain emerged from the storm. Thin fractals appeared and disappeared just beneath the surface.
“Whoa…” Aignar said.
“Each time I see one of our starships, or an orbital archology,” Cha’ril said, “I think that our species have come so far, accomplished so much. Then this reminds us all that we are nothing but children…playing with our toys on the grand stage of history.”
The Scipio slowed and came to a stop a few dozen yards over the surface.
“Tagawa here. Anti-gravs are encountering some sort of interference. I can’t risk going any lower. You good for a little drop?” the captain asked.
“Drop is no issue. Recovery is,” Gideon said.
“We can run winch lines. Better than the catch wires on Nimbus,” she said.
“You’ve got a loose cannon down here.” Roland slapped his hand against the supply crate.
“We’ll have it secured before we scoot back to the fleet,” she said. “Be prepped for at least thirty-six hours before we return.”
“We’ll stay busy.” Gideon said and dropped through the hellhole.
Roland jumped down. Oricon Prime’s gravity exerted slightly less pull than Earth’s and he landed with a hollow bell toll as his feet struck the azure metal. Roland moved away from his landing spot and readied his gauss cannons.
In the skies above, corvettes dropped armor across the surface. The vistas were immense, the horizon of the gigantic structure far more than the three miles Roland was used to on Earth. The storm of ivory-colored gas raged over the artifact, but Roland felt nothing against his armor.
“Nitrogen,” Gideon said. “Atmosphere is nothing but pure nitrogen. Half the pressure of Earth standard.”
“I would say that’s impossible, considering this gas giant is mostly hydrogen and helium, but here we are on some ancient civilization’s…what is it? Science station?” Roland asked. Cha’ril and Aignar dropped in behind him.
“We’ll find out.” Gideon looked up at the Scipio. “Tagawa, can you read me?”
“For once,” she said. “We’ve got tight-band coms back to the fleet from here. Destroyer Kearney will drop a relay buoy in geostationary orbit. You need us, we’ll come running. Good luck down there. Scipio, out.”
“I don’t see an entrance.” Aignar thumped his heel against the surface. “Something tells me breach kits might not work.”
“Sixty-five square miles of surface area,” Gideon said. “Company commander wants us to do a grid search. Call out anything unusual.”
“This whole place is unusual,” Aignar muttered.
The Dragoons spread out into a line and started walking. Roland scanned back and forth over the glinting metal.
“Sir, did anyone manage to get into that other Qa’Resh facility?” Roland asked. “The one with the spinning layers.”
“There’s no definitive yes or no on that,” Gideon said. “But there is a large number of classified files about that operation. If the Breitenfeld showed up and couldn’t get past the front door, I suspect there wouldn’t be as much to classify.”
&nb
sp; “The Breitenfeld again,” Aignar said. “What didn’t that ship do during the war?”
“It had the only jump drives in the Earth fleet,” Cha’ril said. “That a strategic asset was put toward strategic goals isn’t a surprise.”
“It wasn’t the only jump drive,” Roland said. “Eighth Fleet had one, used it to slow the Xaros hive moon coming in from Barnard’s Star. My father was on that fleet.”
“Who wants to bet there was someone named Ibarra on the away team that went into the other Qa’Resh…thing?” Aignar asked.
“I wish we knew what they’re looking for here.” Roland half-turned around and gazed up at the white skies. “Bet the Union could use whatever…where did that come from?”
Roland aimed his gauss cannons at a black circle several yards wide on the ground just behind them.
“That wasn’t there a second ago,” Aignar said. “I walked over it. We all walked over it.”
The circle shimmered with surface tension, like the top of a glass of water one drop away from overflowing.
“Other lances are reporting the same thing,” Gideon said.
“Roland,” Aignar said as he punched his friend on the shoulder, “go rub your face in it.”
“Piss off,” Roland said. “Remember when you asked me to look in that crevice on Nimbus? I ended up with some sort of octopus thing on my neck doing…you know what it was doing.”
“I believe it was copulating with your neck servos,” Cha’ril said. “I still have several pictures if you’re unsure what happened.”
Gideon stomped a heel against the ground.
“Roland, you are the junior Dragoon,” the lieutenant said. “Examine it.”
“Sir.” Roland said as he knelt next to the circle and snaked a camera wire out of his wrist. It moved through the black surface like it wasn’t even there. Beneath was a long, evenly lit tunnel that sloped downward at a slight curve. The dimensions of the tunnel gave him pause, as the diameter appeared nearly double the width of the black circle.
“Lead’s inside, plenty of room for us.” Roland drew his camera line back in with a snap.
Gideon took a thin metal cone off his back and set the base against the edge of the circle. It locked against the surface, then unfurled into a satellite dish.
“Let’s go.” The lieutenant slipped into the dark portal. No sound escaped as his feet struck the tunnel walls.
Cha’ril got to the edge and hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” Roland asked.
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong,” she said, her voice strained. The Dotari put a hand next to the edge and kicked her feet up and into the portal. Roland went after her. His sabatons slid against the tunnel and he had to put a hand to the wall to slow to a stop. He looked back to the portal and saw a perfectly smooth black circle, almost perpendicular to the tunnel. Roland looked back down the tunnel, then back to the portal. The portal’s angle felt…wrong.
“No walk path,” Aignar said as he slipped through. “No residue on the walls. Guess we’re not coming through a smoke stack or sewer line.”
“We still have comms with the surface.” Gideon raised an arm and swung it forward, the old hand-and-arm signal for “follow me.”
While the tunnel still had a nitrogen atmosphere, Roland noted that his footfalls made no sound at all when they struck the tunnel walls. They descended for several minutes, the tunnel twisting down like a spring coil.
Their path leveled out and opened into a dome that stretched for miles. In the center, sheets of gold and white glass the size of the Ardennes’ hull plates spun slowly, their shapes changing from two-dimensional flame motifs to fractals dancing within fractals and star fields that shifted moment by moment.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Cha’ril looked away from the object.
“What the hell is that?” Aignar asked. “The way they’re moving around each other, it’s impossible.”
“By my pace count, we’ve gone a little more than a few kilometers.” Roland pointed to the ceiling. “That is ten kilometers high.”
“Captain Sobieski warned that we may experience some non-Newtonian physics in here,” Gideon said.
“Great.” Aignar said, shaking his helm. “Space magic.”
“Not magic,” Cha’ril said. “Just a use of space and time we cannot explain.”
“That is exactly how you define magic,” Aignar said.
“Is that what we’re looking for?” Roland pointed at the slow-moving wall sections in the center of the dome.
“I think it’s…art,” Gideon said. “Visitors arrive at the surface, descend through the tunnels, and see this.”
“It is a mistake to put our own cultural patterns over an alien civilization so…alien,” Cha’ril said.
“Let’s just call it art until we figure out for sure if it’s a Qa’Resh privy or not,” Aignar said.
“Look.” Roland zoomed in on white dunes around the base of the moving sculpture, the dark dot of a portal on each one.
Gideon walked toward the dunes, his stride long and purposeful. As they neared the dunes, Roland felt the ground shift slightly against his feet. He found himself standing in sand. He looked back and the once-solid floor he’d been on was now white sand.
“That’s…odd,” Roland said. He leaned to one side to look at a pattern in the sand behind Cha’ril, and she shoved him out of the way.
“Move!” she hissed.
Roland walked to the pattern and sent a picture to his lance.
“Treads.” Gideon stopped. “Armor treads.”
“One of the other lances must have made it down here first,” Roland said. “They would have left a mark for which portal they went through. That’s protocol—right, Cha’ril?”
Cha’ril stood next to a portal, her helm angled toward the ground.
Roland pinged her systems and found her external optics were shut off.
“Cha’ril? What’s wrong?” Roland asked.
“I am having difficulty…Dotari…we…” Her optics came back online. “We do not handle spatial irregularities well. Our eyesight is keen, designed to see and process information better than humans. When I look around, it’s like my eyes are on fire. The angles are wrong. They’re wrong!”
Roland looked at Aignar, who shrugged.
Gideon put a hand over her helm optics.
“Power down all external inputs but audio,” the lieutenant said. “You’re dangerously close to redlining, are you aware of that?”
“Just give me a minute,” she said. “My system needs to adjust.”
“Your neural load is far too high,” Gideon said. “Your brain is trying too hard to make sense of information it can’t.”
“I am armor,” she said. “I am fury, not some bundle of nerves. I will not fail this mission. I will not!” She tried to push Gideon’s hand away, but he grabbed her by the back of the head. A panel on her helm slid open and access wires in Gideon’s hand connected to her armor.
“If you redline, you will fail,” he said, “and we would be less without you.”
Cha’ril grabbed at Gideon’s hands. There was a snap and Cha’ril’s armor went rigid.
“I locked her in and set her armor to follow mode.” Gideon stepped back and Cha’ril’s arms fell to her sides. “The Dotari are usually resistant to any neural overloads…but this is a curveball. The only armor that’s ever been in a place like this was human and they never had any problems. I’m taking her back to the surface. The Scipio hasn’t gone far. They may be able to double back and extract her.”
“One of us should take her,” Roland said. “You’ve got—”
“Either of you ever walked someone back from the redline? I’ve trained you all since selection. Don’t tell me you’ve picked up that skill while I wasn’t looking. She—and this mission—are my responsibility,” Gideon said. “You two keep searching. Follow search protocols. If I don’t catch up to you in the next eight hours, return to the surface.”
&
nbsp; “But Cha’ril—”
“Where did I stutter while giving orders?” Gideon snapped. “What wasn’t crystal clear?”
“We’ve got it, sir,” Aignar said.
Gideon ran back to the tunnel. Cha’ril’s armor followed, mimicking his stride perfectly.
“She’ll be all right,” Aignar said. “Good thing the lieutenant knew how to recognize a near redline.”
“I hate to think how he learned.” Roland pointed to the nearest dune. “Split up or stay together?”
“Together, you seem nervous and defensive. I’ll keep you safe.”
“I am neither nervous nor defensive,” Roland said.
“That is exactly what a nerv—hey, wait for me.” Aignar hurried after Roland to the dune.
Roland touched the sand along the edge of the dark portal. His finger left an indentation, reminding him of a childhood trip to a beach and building a sand castle with his parents.
“The other lance should’ve left a multi-spectrum tag around whatever portal they went through,” Roland said. “Left another tag once they came back out.” He switched between optics feeds as he scanned along the edge of the portals.
“I’d say it shouldn’t have taken them long to go through any of these dunes,” Aignar said. “They’re a little bigger than a Mule cargo compartment. But this Qa’Resh tech…who knows what happens when you go through? Might end up on Earth in the 1990s. Get sent to some far-flung galaxy on a living ship with a misfit crew or—”
“There.” Roland said and pointed to a dune farther along the circle. “Got a hit on the ultraviolet.”
“We want to follow them or go our own way?” Aignar asked.
Roland got to the dune and placed his palm over a streak running perpendicular from the edge of the portal. A pale-white light lit up in his palm and a word appeared within the streak: ERREGELA.
“The mark should be the name of the lance and what time they came through,” Roland said. “Who’s ‘erregela’?”
“Let’s go ask.” Aignar pointed to the portal.
“It’s your turn.” Roland stepped back and waved Aignar toward the pitch-black circle.