by GARY DARBY
Captain Federov gave a slight shrug. “Rogue planet, interstellar nomad, galactic wanderer; take your pick what to call it,” he replied.
“They all mean the same thing—a dead, dark, frozen world on a free trajectory through the cosmos. But in this case, maybe not so lifeless.”
Teng turned his head from the sensor imagery. “You’ve found something?”
“Maybe,” Federov replied and gestured for Teng to follow. He led him over to another set of consoles where Federov said to a young officer, “Ensign Kelli, show Mister Rhee what you’ve found.”
The young woman entered several commands on her console. A holo-disc of the planet appeared in midair over her panel. She enlarged a small portion of its surface that showed a faint, plumelike glow.
“We’ve picked up a very weak heat signature but it doesn’t appear to be from a natural source.”
“What makes you think that?” Teng questioned.
Kelli gestured at the dark orb. “Two reasons. First, geologically, this is a dead world; even its core has lost most of its heat.
“What little underground warmth is left isn’t enough to provide thermal venting at the surface. Therefore, I’m all but certain that the heat cloud we’re seeing is from a man-made source.
“Second, the vented heat is too directional, almost like a jet straight up—as if something is forming the plume as it exits.”
“Could it be from a weapon?” Teng asked.
Federov turned to a gray-haired man sitting at the next sensor board. “Chief?”
“I don’t think so, captain,” Nerea answered. “It’s not hot enough and we’re not seeing any electromagnetic signatures associated with the heat source.
“I think Ensign Kelli is right; the plume is probably venting from something akin to an exhaust pipe.”
Federov nodded and said almost to himself, “Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.”
“What do you mean?” Teng asked.
“Well,” Federov explained, “if you were intentionally trying to hide, having laser weapon emissions wouldn’t do much to help your cause, especially out here in the middle of the Planemo Passage.”
“Sorry,” Teng said, “you lost me. Planemo Passage?”
“Kelli, tell the man about the passage,” Federov ordered.
The young officer gave a curt nod that caused her aqua-colored hair to bounce. She swiveled around and said, “The Triangulum Emission Nebula lies approximately 5,000 light-years from here in the general direction of the galactic center.
“It’s a star-forming nebula with a very severe gravitational outflow due to the nearby presence of a Class Two singularity.”
She turned to her compu, entered several commands and a holographic image of a glowing nebula, shaped like a mass of interconnecting diamond rings, appeared over her console.
“One of the gas cloud’s unique features is that it has a rotational period, and it’s quite rapid,” she explained.
“Dense matter from the interior is drawn into these outer bands where they clump together into stars, protostars, and planetary bodies. Eventually the black hole sucks most of them into the horizon line and they die.
“However, some of the lighter stuff gets spun out of the cloud’s mass, typically along the axis of an ejection cylinder that intersects Imperium space near sector ten, about fifty light-years from here.
“Right now there are over a thousand interstellar nomads moving down the passage. But since their trajectories only skirt Imperium space, we rarely pay any attention to them, especially since they’re all dead worlds and will ultimately drift back toward the galactic core.
“Independent miners have made some limited attempts to set up mining operations on some of these nomads, but most of those have not succeeded. Just too far outside Imperium space.”
Teng gestured at the tiny plume and asked, “Could that be evidence of a mining operation, then?”
“It’s possible,” Kelli acknowledged in a dubious voice. “But we haven’t found anything on the surface that would indicate miners are down there. But we just started our scans.”
Teng turned to Federov. “Are those other nomads typically like this one?”
Federov nodded in answer. “Pretty much. They’re essentially just big balls of frozen lava. Most were in the molten stage when they were catapulted out of the cloud and after a couple of billion years, or more, of being exposed to the deep freeze, this is what you get.”
Teng gestured toward the hologram and asked, “So it wouldn’t take a whole lot to drill into the crust and carve out underground facilities.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Federov admitted. “A laser drill and excavator feeding a rock chewer would make short work of this stuff.
“Heat seal some poly-resin on the inside of whatever the chewer carved out, install some pressure locks, pump in some atmosphere and you’re in business.”
Federov scratched at his chin and asked pointedly, “So what is it that we’re looking for exactly? A Faction base? The lost silver mines of El Dorado? Santa Claus and his reindeer?”
Teng gave Federov a small smile. “While silver mines could make us a little money on the side and finding Santa Claus might answer the age-old question of whether instantaneous travel is possible, the sad reality is that I’m not entirely sure.
“The information I’m working on is pretty sketchy, but for now, my best guess is that what we might be looking for is a Faction research facility.”
“Research!” Federov sputtered. “I didn’t know that the Faction was into research.”
Teng gave a little shrug of understanding. “Pretty standard assumption given that most people just hear about the Faction’s fighting arm. But no, the Faction has research facilities along with production and manufacturing sites that they hide so well that we rarely get a lead on one.”
Federov nodded in response. “That explains why you were so eager to take a look-see at this.”
“Exactly,” Teng replied and motioned toward the dark orb. “Can we move in closer to get a better look?”
“Not yet,” Federov replied in a firm tone. “We’ll lay off for a bit and do thorough sensor sweeps before moving in closer. If this is a Faction base, I don’t want them to do an Ursula on me.”
Teng shook his head and gave Federov a quizzical look. “Sorry. Ursula?”
Federov grunted in response. “Captain Corel Ursula, the War Sprite’s skipper. The Sprite had orders to recon the Theta Centauri system for a possible Faction nest.
“I’m not sure what Captain Ursula was thinking because instead of laying off and using her sensors to size up the situation first, she went charging in.
“The Faction used a large asteroid to hide several battle platforms and opened fire on the Sprite at point-blank range. The control room took a direct hit, killing the entire on-duty crew, including Captain Ursula.
“The exec managed to extricate the vessel from the ambush, and it limped back to homeport, with only spit and duct tape keeping her together.
“Since then, standing orders are to ‘look before you leap’ so we’ll sit out here and do a thorough scan. If nothing pops up on sensors, then I’ll move us in.”
He gestured with one hand toward the sensor panel and said, “In the meantime, let’s see what this heat signature is. Ensign, chief, let’s do a full scan around that plume, but passive only. I don’t want to go active and wake the neighborhood up just yet.”
Ensign Kelli and Chief Nerea turned back to their consoles. Teng Rhee took several steps back to watch, not wanting to appear as if he were watching over their shoulders, though that’s just what he was doing, only from a distance.
After several minutes, a dark, shadowy, rounded dome appeared on Chief Nerea’s console screen. Both Teng and Captain Federov leaned in closer to the screen to get a better look.
Teng reached out and used his finger to trace the structure’s curved arc. “It appears to be a geodesic dome,” he said.
“
I believe that’s precisely what it is,” Nerea replied. “And it looks big enough to put a rugby field underneath.”
“Chief,” Federov commented dryly, “you’re still trying to live your glory days every time you mention rugby.”
“Sorry, sir,” Nerea replied. “But some of us do have glory days to relive, you know.”
“Humph,” Federov grumped. “I don’t know why I put up with your sass, chief.”
“Because I’m the best sensor tech in the fleet,” Nerea responded. “And I have a humble disposition.”
“Right on the first one chief,” Federov muttered. “I’ll lay you big odds on the second.”
“Well,” Teng asked, “if it’s big enough to put the chief’s rugby field under, are we talking a habitat dome for miners?”
Nerea shook his head. “No, sir. Miners don’t use domes. They put practically everything underground. If this were miners, you’d see a small pressurized processing shed and maybe some slag heaps near the mine entrance but nothing else. Outworld miners eat, sleep, and work underground.”
He pointed at the image and said, “Take a look to the right of the dome. See that large hill mass? Watch.”
Nerea entered several commands in the compu, and a faint line first formed down the screen’s middle, and then spread out to form a large arc, followed by a straight line at the bottom that connected the arc.
Teng leaned forward to stare at the image and said, “It’s almost like two sectors of a circle joined together. What is it?”
“Well, if we’re talking geometry,” Federov commented, “you’re close, but in more practical terms—that, sir, appears to be one enormous airlock door.
“And they’ve opened it very recently because those lines you see are residual warmth left over from the door’s metal-against-metal friction.”
Teng immediately straightened up, his eyes widening slightly in response to Federov’s comment. “You can pick up something that faint?”
“A minute from now,” Federov explained, “and we wouldn’t have. Like I said, they must have just opened and closed it or we wouldn’t have picked up the residual heat.”
Teng nodded his head at Federov’s explanation and then muttered, “From what I know, the only airlock doors that are built to that size are used by your service and a few of the bigger deep-space corporations.”
“That’s true,” Federov replied. “But I can assure you that’s not an Imperium Navy base. We don’t have anything this far out, and we certainly wouldn’t build one on a galactic free-floater.
“And frankly, I have a hard time seeing one of the corporations building an underground complex this far out of Imperium space.”
“So,” Teng began, his eyes narrowing as he contemplated what lay before them, “we have thermal venting, a geodesic dome, and a monstrous airlock; and all seemingly tied to a facility built below the surface.”
He glanced around and asked, “Who built it, why did they build it and what is it? Simple questions, right? So any ideas?”
Nerea shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “Go ahead, chief,” Federov ordered. “I can see you’re chomping on your bit. Let’s hear it.”
Nerea turned to Teng and said, “Well, sir, when you put a new ship, such as the IntrepidX into service, you do a series of space trials to test her systems, attune instruments, adjust sensors, and so forth.
“To calibrate the Hartbeldt drive, we do a timed run between Titan in the Sol system and Nav Station Fletcher in the Alpha Centauri B system.
“Since we know the exact distance between the two at any given time, it’s easy to determine your actual hyperspeed at one hundred percent of H-drive.
“So, just before our timed runs for the Intrepid, fleet HQ sent me out to NS Fletcher to synch the runs. The station is burrowed deep into the Kronos asteroid, but all of its instrumentation packages sit topside.”
Nerea reached over and brought up another image on a separate console. He waved a hand at the holo-pic and said, “That’s what the station’s sensor array looks like at just about the same distance as we are from this planet.”
Teng examined both images and muttered, “They look practically identical. But why a dome in the vacuum of space?”
Nerea gave a slight nod and explained, “Common misconception is that interstellar space is free of any particulate matter. It’s not.
“On an airless world such as this one, even the tiniest meteorite is going to smack the planet at a high velocity with lots of kinetic energy. If one hit an ultrasensitive sensor, it would destroy the whole array.
“So, you build your dome, go in and suck up all the loose stuff, and then place your instrument pods inside to protect them from anything topside as well as loose dust particles on the surface.”
“So,” Teng replied, “you’re inferring that the structure on the planet is a protective cover for a sensor array, similar to what’s at your naval station?”
Nerea didn’t respond so Federov gave him a slight nudge. “Go ahead, chief, you’re making a lot of sense. What else are you thinking?”
Nerea screwed his mouth to one side and said to Teng, “Yes sir, I believe so. Look, I’m not one of those brainy analytical types that work the intelligence field so what I’m about to throw out may be cockeyed, but if you’re asking me, I think that someone set all of this up, way out here in the middle of nowhere to test something.
“And that something is behind those big airlock doors. And if I guessed at what that something was, I’d say it was some type of ship.”
“Some type of ship,” Teng repeated and bent over to stare at the dome’s image on the vu-screen.
To no one in particular he said, “Meaning a ship that’s so out of the ordinary that you’d build a test site in a virtually empty region of space to that you could hide whatever you’re building and testing.”
He muttered to himself darkly, “Or because what you’re hiding is so dangerous, so destructive, that you can’t chance having it near civilized space?”
With furrowed brows at Teng’s remark, Federov spoke low to Teng. “I certainly hope it’s the former and not the latter.”
“So do I,” Teng replied in the same low voice.
“What do you want to do?” Federov asked. “Call for help?”
Teng glanced again at the sensor image and rubbed at his forehead as he considered his options. “No,” he answered. “The longer we wait, the greater the chance that they’ll discover we’re on to them.”
He tightened his mouth and said, “Captain, once you’ve completed your scan, would you have Lieutenant Jin-Sang join us in your ops room. As they say, it’s time for the Marines to hit the beach.”
Chapter Eleven
Star date: 2443.096
Aboard the INS IntrepidX
“Well?” Teng Rhee asked, eyeing the short, muscular Imperium Space Marine officer who stood next to him. “Do you think you can sneak in there undetected?”
Like all marines, Lieutenant Jin-Sang wore his hair “high and tight” and now ran a hand over the short bristles as he stood peering at the high-resolution digi-pics and other sensor information provided by Chief Nerea.
He glanced sideways at his companion, Gunny Sergeant Kasum. Unlike Jin-Sang, Kasum was tall and lanky and the worry creases around his mouth and eyes spoke of years of experience in “ramroddin’ troops” in the Corps.
Add in the several scars that both Jin-Sang and Kasum bore from battle and Teng knew that Admiral Stannick had indeed provided him with a cadre of combat veterans who knew their stuff.
The two straightened up after having pored over the data which showed that the terrain around the dome was a foreboding landscape. Massive, solid lava flows that seemed braided in twisted, tortuous channels spread over the surface only broken here and there by the occasional frozen lava bubble.
It was a grim, dark and forbidding scene that could easily hide danger, especially to anyone on foot, even if they wore Space Marine mech-battle suits.
Jin-Sang turned to Captain Federov and asked, “Still no weapon signatures, nothing to indicate that they could lock onto us on the way down or on the surface?”
“No,” Federov answered. “But we’re still scanning. So far, nothing to indicate that we have any free space or mobile weapon platforms or stand-alone laser batteries. What you have there is everything we’ve picked up so far.”
Jin-Sang nodded in response and offered in a musing tone, “They may not have long-range stuff and their shorties wouldn’t activate until we were practically on top of them.”
He gestured at the high-def imagery of what appeared to be hangar doors. “With what we carry, the airlock is too big for us to blow, unless you want to do that for us with a bunker buster missile or laser blast.”
“No,” Teng replied firmly. “We don’t want to do that. First, I don’t want us to advertise our presence until we have to, and second, there is just the slightest chance that this might not be a Faction base. For all we know, there just might be innocent civilians down there.”
“All right,” Jin-Sang replied, “then that leaves the dome. We can probably cut our way in, but that might set off an alarm, and we don’t know if there is a tunnel leading from it to the compound.”
He pointed toward the dome image and said, “We could get inside and find out if it’s a dead end.”
Teng turned to Chief Nerea. “Chief, that dome on your naval station, how was it linked to the monitoring site inside the asteroid?”
Nerea turned to his compu console and seconds later, a glowing holographic schematic popped up. Nerea ran his finger along a line shaded in green.
“The Nav station had a service tunnel that ran from the dome back into the monitoring station. The tube was full of nano and micro cables, but it was large enough to comfortably accommodate a mech suit.”
“So,” Teng said, “if they’ve imitated what we see here, then we should find a tunnel.”
“If being the operative term,” Jin-Sang remarked to no one in particular.