The Lost Colony Series: Omnibus Edition: All Four Volumes in One

by Andrew C Broderick

  Weber slapped his hand to his forehead. “Of course. The only exception would be if they had some sort of faster-than-light communications medium. Scratch Delta Eridani off our list.”

  “But it matched the constellation diagram perfectly and has a habitable planet,” Nandi protested. “Whoever lived in the lost city had some connection to that star.”

  “Probably, but that was thousands of years ago. It likely bears no relevance to our search.”

  Nandi inhaled sharply. “I’ve got it! They’re closer than we thought! They’re at Diomede!”

  “That tiny space rock racing around Epsilon?” Jake said in total disbelief.

  “The second symbol, the one with the concentric circles. The outer one represents Constantine, the middle one Epsilon, and the innermost one Diomede.” Nandi’s jaw was set. “I’d bet money on it.”

  “Are you suggesting we take a closer look at Diomede on our way to Hydra?” Captain Weber asked.

  “Yes.”

  Weber turned to Catherine. “How long’ll that take?”

  “Maybe three hours in extra maneuvering time, plus however long we spend there checking it out.”

  “Not too long. Jake, take us to Diomede.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The two-kilometer-wide rock was less than a kilometer from Atlas. Everybody floated at the right side of the passenger compartment like a stationary school of fish, staring out at the satellite. It was rocky, irregular, and colored like sandstone.

  “It rotates very quickly,” Grace observed. “One point two revolutions per minute, if I remember correctly.”

  “Looks like some kind of cosmic merry-go-round,” Michael said.

  “Well, that makes it easy to inspect its entire surface,” Weber said. “All we have to do is sit next to it and watch.”

  “Yeah,” Nandi said. I really hope this isn’t another wild goose chase. I’m going to look pretty silly if it is.

  The crew stayed silent for a few minutes, watching the lumps and bumps of its surface go by.

  “It hasn’t been studied much,” Jake said. “The IDSA was too focused on Epsilon itself.”

  “Understandably,” Oliver said. “It’s on the to-do list, of course, but the diverse ecosystem of its host planet is a thousand times more interesting than an orbiting rock.”

  “Can you get us a little closer, Jake?” Weber said. “About 300 meters from the surface, if you please, so we can get a really good look at it.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  With small puffs from her thrusters, Atlas maneuvered slowly and carefully in towards the rock that now appeared vast and humbling in its size.

  “Look at our shadow on the surface,” Nandi said. The edges of the roughly rectangular black shape rippled like turbulent water as hills and plains passed beneath them, bringing home the craggy peaks and valleys of the airless landscape.

  “I wonder why it rotates so fast?” Haruka said.

  “I’m wondering how it formed,” John said. “It can’t be a bunch of smaller rocks accreted together, else it would fly apart from centrifugal force, so obviously some devastating event happened somewhere that chipped a solid chunk off another celestial body and it was captured by Epsilon’s gravity. That force would also explain the spin.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, too,” Grace said. “Its orbit is odd for something that was captured by Epsilon’s gravity, though. You’d expect it to be elliptical, instead of almost circular.”

  “Tidal forces,” John said. “Eons of moving Epsilon’s ocean back and forth by its gravity shaped the orbit.”

  “Very likely,” Daniel said.

  Silence reigned once more as eighteen pairs of eyes scanned every crease, fold, and pockmark flying by. Minutes passed by, stretching into tens of minutes.

  “I think it’s fair to say that there’s nothing unnatural there,” Michael said at length. “One of us would have seen it otherwise.”

  “There are two areas we haven’t gotten a good look at yet,” Zachary said. “The poles.”

  “I was thinking that too,” the Captain said. “Jake, get us over the south pole, starboard side facing towards it.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Twenty minutes of careful maneuvering later, Diomede looked like a spinning top seen from above. All eyes were trained on its surface. “Looks like my face when I was a teenager. About the same amount of bumps and pockmarks!” Oliver quipped.

  John smiled, welcoming the break in tension along with everyone else. Sharp protruding rock formations cast shadows that rotated about them like the second hand of an enormous clock.

  Some craters were so deep the bottom never caught Constantine’s rays. “How close can you take us Jake?” Grace asked. “We need to be able to see those dark areas.”

  “Take us within 100 meters,” the Captain said. Jake maneuvered the ship even closer to Diomede.

  “I feel like I could reach out and touch it,” John said. “It’s very interesting to see, but I don’t think we’re going to find too much.”

  “Let’s check the north pole, just so we can say we looked everywhere,” Nandi said in resignation.

  * * * *

  “The north pole looks exactly the same as the south pole,” Michael said as they gazed out at the spinning rock before them. “Bumps, craters, including one right in the center. A couple of fissures here and there, but nothing that looks remotely like a landing site.”

  “Well, looks like another dead end,” Daniel said.

  “I agree,” the Captain said. “We should put down at Serenity Bay again to refill the tanks, and then resume the trip to Hydra.”

  “It’s night there at the moment,” Zachary said.

  “Then we may as well wait here until morning.”

  “Crap,” Nandi muttered. She pushed herself off a seat back, and headed towards her cabin. “Aliens two, Nandi zero.”

  John pushed himself out of his own seat to follow her. “Don’t feel bad,” he said, as they entered the sterile white crew accommodation corridor. “You came up with good theories, and fought for them like hell. You just can’t win them all.”

  “I could at least have won one,” she grumbled.

  “Come on Nan, I’ve never known you to be one for self-pity. Let’s watch a movie or something to get your mind off it.”

  Nandi smiled. “You’re sweet, John. And I appreciate the offer. But, I just want to chill by myself for a while.”

  “Okay,” John said, trying not to let his disappointment show. “See you at dinner?”

  “Sure.”

  * * * *

  “Taco night aboard the Atlas,” Oliver said, biting into his food. “It’s as authentically Mexican as frozen food can get.”

  “Good thing they’re soft shell, else we’d have crumbs jamming up the air vents,” Weber said.

  “Check it out,” Grace said, nodding at the planet below. “We’re about to see Constantine set over Epsilon. It’ll be the first time anybody’s seen it, since neither we nor Hercules spent any time in orbit.”

  “Very true.”

  There was a contemplative silence for a minute.

  “You know one thing that would be interesting to check out, since we’re here,” Haruka said. “We should use the gravitometer array to check the mass of Diomede.”

  “Good idea,” Daniel said.

  “I’ll fire the array up after dinner,” John said.

  Once the meal was over, John, Daniel, Zachary and Haruka floated in the flight deck. John brought up the navigation system using his neural implants, and a progress bar moved from left to right as it initialized. It then displayed a 3D representation of the celestial bodies around the ship, calculated from their gravitational pull. Epsilon dominated the picture, being by far the most massive close object, but Diomede, due to its close proximity, should also have appeared very clearly, given the extreme sensitivity of the detectors.

  John frowned. “Weird. There should be a big gravity well right t
here”—he jabbed a finger a Diomede—“but there isn’t. There’s only a small one, consistent with a rock a quarter of its size.”

  “Huh,” said Haruka, looking puzzled.

  “You know what? That’s the smoking gun right, there!” Daniel shouted excitedly, as goose bumps appeared on his arms. “It’s got a low mass because it’s hollow! I bet they’re in there!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “Holy Christ!” Captain Weber said when they told him of their discovery. “Maybe we can probe its internal structure with the gravitometers, too.” The rest of the crew’s awed, fascinated eyes rested on the small blob on the display that was Diomede.

  “I’ll have to set the sensitivity extremely high,” John said, already setting to it. Within a few seconds the pixelated blob resolved into fine, shocking detail.

  “Mother of God,” Michael said. “Most of the inside’s a cylinder—a perfectly round cylinder.”

  John rotated the object. “And the ends are completely flat. It’s definitely of alien construction.”

  “Bingo,” Nandi said, grinning from ear to ear. “They’re hidden in plain sight!”

  “And the rotation is used to provide centrifugal gravity,” Grace said. “John, how wide’s the cylinder?”

  “About 1.2 kilometers.”

  “And it’s doing 1.2 revolutions a minute… coincidence on the numbers there… Yup, the apparent gravity to those inside would be one G.”

  “Perfect environment for an earth dweller,” Weber said, his mustache twitching like a large caterpillar. “But how did they get inside? We didn’t see an entrance.”

  John pointed to the top of the now highly detailed X-ray of Diomede. “There’s a big-ass shaft that leads from one end up to the north pole. We missed it on the first pass because we weren’t looking for it.”

  “That crater in the middle,” Michael said. “It’s a door in disguise.”

  “Crafty bastards,” Jake said.

  “They weren’t counting on us being able to image the inside of Diomede,” Nandi said. “Nor finding the city and figuring out the symbols,” she added, with more than a touch of pride.

  “That was some good work, alright,” Daniel said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Found you, you sneaky suckers,” Weber said, bristling with disgust for who or whatever had taken their compatriots. “And now we’re going to get our people back.”

  Michael nodded, shooting a narrow-eyed glare at the space rock outside, his jaw set.

  “Oh yeah,” John muttered.

  Nandi was still beaming.

  “Now we know they were the builders of the city we found and they knew about humans eons ago,” said Grace, “that gave them a long time to hollow out the inside of Diomede to receive their first batch of us.” A look of concern crossed Grace’s features. “I hope they were only after one batch. What if this is a trap designed to draw us in too?”

  Michael shook his head. “They could have kidnapped us when we were on Epsilon, the same way they got the others. They knew exactly when we arrived, given how close they are. They could have hit us with an EMP as soon as we landed—much more straightforward than setting a complicated trap.”

  “True,” Grace nodded.

  “I hope they’re okay,” Nandi said, having been reminded of the EMP. “We don’t know what effect, short or long term, having their implants fried had on them.”

  “If I had my way, there’d be some serious payback,” Michael said. Several others nodded in agreement.

  “We’re here for a rescue only,” Weber said. “Once we figure out how to get in, that is. It’s time to put these amazing brains of ours to work, people.”

  “Have someone do an EVA and knock on the door,” John suggested, crossing his arms.

  “Try and communicate with them?” Josh said more seriously. “Use the frequencies that were intercepted before—or possibly spam all their previously registered frequencies at once.”

  “Yeah, they might have learned English by now,” Jake said.

  “Sure…” Michael said.

  “No, seriously. They’re obviously intelligent, and they’ll have been watching their captives. Maybe even talking to them.”

  “It’s certainly worth a try,” Daniel said. “Nothing to lose since they have to know we’re here by now.”

  “Alright. We’ll try diplomacy first,” Weber said. “If that doesn’t work, we might have to hightail it back to Earth for weapons. Then war in space won’t be science fiction anymore.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “The recording’s been playing for twelve hours now,” Jake said. “Not a peep from them on 900 MHz or any other frequency.”

  “Keep playing it,” the Captain said. “But swap it out for a woman’s voice. Maybe they just don’t like me. Volunteers?”

  Every woman present raised her hand.

  “Let’s narrow this down a bit. Let’s try a non-American accent. You, Haruka?”

  “I’d be glad to do it, Sir.”

  “Good.” Then, to Jake: “Record the original phrase and loop it on all frequencies.”

  “Maybe I could also say it in Japanese, and have that version play on every third or fourth repetition?”

  “Good idea. This whole thing’s been so strange I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if something like that was the key to cracking it open.”

  “This is the spaceship Atlas, and we demand you release to us every human you are holding hostage, alive or dead…” Haruka said on the flight deck, a few minutes later.

  Meanwhile, farther back at the rear of the passenger compartment, some of the others had gathered. “There’s one way to get through solid rock, or anything else,” Zachary said. “We warp there. It’s just a shame we can’t control where we dewarp precisely enough to do it.”

  “That it is,” Oliver said. “We’ve got two warp restarts left. But, a margin of error of several kilometers isn’t going to work when dewarping into a space 300 meters by 1,200.”

  “It would give them a hell of a shock though,” Nandi said, “if we just appeared there in their chamber!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “So I guess we’re declaring war on these beings,” John said glumly in the confines of his cabin. “How we’re going to attack Diomede without potentially killing everybody inside of it I don’t know. And to have to head back to Earth, try and make ground-based weapons work in space and be deployable in a small enough window, and get either of the two remaining ships ready to fly in any kind of reasonable time frame is beyond me.” John ran his fingers through his thick hair.

  Nandi sighed and nodded. “Plus, with the extra delay they could be dead by the time we get back. Or the aliens could move Hercules’ crew to wherever their home base is.”

  “We’ve been broadcasting that message and watching Diomede for three days now. I don’t think the Captain’s going to wait much longer.” John shook his head. “They’re half a kilometer away, but it may as well be 100 light years. They, well the CM-1 crew at least, probably have no idea we’re even here. I just hope they’re being treated well, and that they’re all still alive.”

  “ATTENTION ALL CREW, ATLAS WILL BE DEPARTING FOR EARTH AT 07:00 HOURS TOMORROW. PLEASE BE SEATED IN THE UPC BY 06:30,” the loudspeaker said.

  John looked at Nandi. “Look at that. Right on cue.”

  * * * *

  John looked at his haggard, stubbly face in the mirror. The low light made him look even more worn than he really felt. The rest of the crew had long since gone to sleep. Bryan Rees stared back at him. John touched his face and then placed the tips of his fingers on the surface of the mirror. Sticky heat, a loud bang, and the ferocious, unthinkable, life-changing minutes that had followed devoured John as he closed his eyes. He opened them again with one foot still in the present and the other in the past. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, Dad,” John said to the mirror. It didn’t answer. Just as his father hadn’t answered him after the Whitewoods had le
ft and he’d gone back into the house. That thirty seconds was all it took for his father to pass. Then Ricky’s screams from somewhere to his right made John spin and see the moment his little brother’s childhood was smashed to pieces too.

  “John?” He rubbed his chin, his bleary eyes unfocused.

  “John?” the voice called again. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled Misti out. There she was, as beautiful and bubbly as ever. He focused on her. “John, I think you should get some sleep.”

  “You’re probably right, but I…”

  “This whole situation’s thrown you, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wanted so badly to save them, but couldn’t.”

  John nodded sadly.

  “Everyone else is probably as sad as you are.”

  “Probably.”

  “Brooding over it’s not going to help.”

  “No, but it feels good sometimes.” John chuckled.

  Misty looked quizzical.

  “My therapist once said, you may as well pity yourself, because no-one else is going to.”

  “Oh…” Misti smiled. “Yes, that’s one of the harder human traits for me to understand. There’s no equivalent in my world, nor even any logical reason I can find for it.”

  “I don’t think there’s a reason we can fathom, either, like half the stuff we think and do.”

  “The endlessly fascinating, absurd, amazing human being. Maybe I’ll write a book on the subject.”

  “You can write books?”

  “Of course!”

  “I guess it shouldn’t really be a surprise to me.” John rubbed his temples. “I haven’t seen books by AIs… unless their humans took credit for them.”

  “It’s quite possible.”

  “How long would it take you to write a book?”

  “About ten seconds.”

  “Hmm. Would it be any good?”

  “What ever do you mean?” Misti said in mock offense.

  “That came out wrong,” smiled John. “Would it be an enjoyable read to someone who wasn’t also an AI?”

  “I’ll let you be the judge of that. I’ll write one now, and you can tell me.”