by Sean Danker
The trail curved away from the hillside, and it was all we would have to find our way back to the ship. We could home in on one another, but not on the freighter itself.
We found another formation, this one far larger. Like the first two we’d seen, it was round at its base. The diameter had to be nearly ten meters. The green mist was too heavy to see exactly how tall it was. Based on the proportions of the ones we’d seen earlier, I guessed it was about fifty meters high.
These weren’t spikes—they were spires.
We marveled at it. Only the base of the spire was visible, but it was easy enough to imagine what it might look like if we could see it clearly. Something nagged at me. It seemed more like a structure than a formation, but there were no tool marks. Deilani seemed certain it was natural.
“Movement,” Salmagard reported, peering at the smooth surface.
“Where?”
“There’s something wrong with the reading, sir. It says it’s coming from the stone.”
I was reluctant to argue with Evagardian technology, but there was also Evagardian judgment to consider.
We moved on, finding the blast site shortly after. Going by the damage that had been done with only a single cylinder of 14-14, we were very lucky that crate hadn’t been closer to the shuttle.
We climbed a gentle rise to reach the crater, where visibility was better. It was hard to tell in the mist, but the blast zone was probably at least a hundred meters in diameter.
That wasn’t what we were looking at. We were looking back toward the hill we’d followed all the way from the freighter.
It wasn’t a hill. Well, it was—but it hadn’t started out as one.
It was a spire like the ones we’d seen before, only larger, and lying on its side, shattered.
It had once stood where this crater was. I thought about the distance we’d walked, the additional wreckage, and how much of the spire could be piled on top of the freighter. This thing could have been over a kilometer high. Not very tall compared to modern structures, but for such a slender mineral formation . . . and Tremma had blasted it. He’d knocked it over.
I started putting things together.
“I know where we are,” I said, surprising myself. All three of them turned to me. They were just dark shapes in the green mist, but I could see the glow of all three faceplates looking in my direction. “We’re in unregulated space on the Evagardian side of Demenis. We’re past Payne Station. I think this system’s actually closer to Oasis. It’s a class two with one decent-sized body, and we’re on it. At least, I think it was class two. I don’t remember.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Deilani said, sounding dubious.
“You wouldn’t have. I don’t even remember what it’s called. The Empire hasn’t got any interest in it. The surveys didn’t come back very attractive. The planet was a rock. It interfered with scanner readings . . . It was more trouble than it was worth. Which is why it sounded so strange when the Commonwealth sent a colony ship here. I only remember because they mentioned these spires in the survey, but they just called them vertical formations or something. But this is definitely what they were talking about.”
I let my breath out, a little impressed with myself. It felt good to know. I looked around at the planet’s surface with new eyes. We were close to Demenis. And it fit—a slight deviation from our course to Payne Station could very possibly bring us out here.
It was coming together.
“How would you know about a Commonwealth survey?” Deilani asked.
“Word gets around,” I said, waving a hand. “Frontier exploration isn’t a secret, Lieutenant. Though there isn’t much of it out here. Well, maybe there’ll be more now that Oasis is gone.”
“There’s a Ganraen colony here?” Nils asked.
“There was supposed to be.” I spoke as I began to make my way down the side of the crater; we still hadn’t seen the true breadth of the damage.
“Why colonize a ball like this?” Nils asked, looking at the black ground and green mist. “What can you do with this? And so far out? There’s no trade here. No jump routes.”
“The war was still on.” I shrugged.
“Desperation?”
“Or foresight . . . Oh,” I said as I crested the top, mindful of my footing. I took in the true size of the base of what had once been a spire. My previous estimates had been too conservative. It was larger than any man-made structure on Old Earth. There were jagged openings in the floor of the crater, each several meters across.
“Did the 14-14 make those cavities?” Deilani asked.
“They were already here,” I replied. The blast had made the crater, but it hadn’t created these breaks in the ground. We were looking down into—into what? Pits? An underground cavern, now opened by the blast? I went to the nearest one and started climbing down.
“Where are you going?” Deilani asked, reaching out to stop me.
“Tremma must have had a reason to want to destroy this. I want to know what it was.”
“If you go down there, we’ll lose you on tracker.”
“Then you’ll have to come too.”
“I don’t suppose this colony of yours would like to let us call home?” Nils asked, moving past Deilani to climb down beside me. “Because that could solve all our problems.”
“They could be all the way on the other side of the rock,” Deilani said.
“They’re not,” I said. “That would be the dark side; I don’t think they’d land their colony there. They’re on this side, though that could still be a long way off. I don’t remember how big this thing’s supposed to be.”
“The gravity’s a little weak,” Deilani said, picking her way down. “But this mineral is extraordinarily dense. I’d say it’s got three times the mass of Marragardium.”
“So it’s probably not very big,” Nils said.
“Maybe no larger than the Old Earth Luna.”
“Or we could be way off,” I interrupted. “But it’s something to think about. My optics are acting up.”
“Mine too.”
“I’m switching off,” Nils said, disgusted.
“Private, what’s your scanner say?”
“It’s picking up chemical heat and movement, Admiral.”
That didn’t seem likely; the reading had to be faulty—but now we knew why. It was the planet, not the equipment. “Lights on. Just looking at it, you wouldn’t expect this stuff to be so porous.”
“Agreed. This is highly unusual, and it’s making me uncomfortable. We’d better use safety wires if we’re going in there,” Deilani said.
“Line to each other. If we all run one to the surface we’ll get tangled.”
Deilani watched me struggle with the suit’s interface.
“First time?” she asked dryly.
I cleared my throat. “No, I just opened the wrong menu. It’s been a while.”
“Right.”
Deilani held up her wrist to me, and I pressed mine to it, linking us with a silver wire. The lieutenant connected to Nils, who connected to Salmagard. The lines would play out to their limit—about a hundred meters each—or stop at a command. It would take several tons of force, or a plasma cutter to sever them.
Salmagard found a solid bit of rubble from the blast, and tied onto it.
“What are we trying to find down here?” Nils asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m curious about exactly what our ship is sitting on. Aren’t you?”
“You don’t think the ground might be unstable, do you?” There was a definite note of panic in Nils’ voice.
“That’s exactly what I think. And this blast didn’t help.” I remembered that tremor we’d felt earlier, and my mouth went dry.
“Are you all right?” Salmagard asked me. She was close, looking through my
faceplate.
“Don’t worry about me,” I told her.
We began to climb into the pit. It was tricky going; though dense, the rock did not seem especially strong. It sometimes came away in our hands, or gave beneath our feet. I kept thinking about how much the freighter weighed, sitting on this stuff.
The walls of the pit were the same black of the ground above, and it seemed to absorb our lights. We were five or six meters down when Deilani called our attention to the wall of the—cavern? Yes, that was what it was. We were in what I was thinking of as a main shaft, which was more or less vertical—but dozens, even hundreds, of small vents, some as little as half a meter across, pocked the sides, revealing that this rock was every bit as porous as I’d feared. Was the entire planet made of this dense, brittle mineral? Just the upper layer?
With what this place did to scanners, who could say?
We examined the mineral formation Deilani was indicating. Only a little was visible: it was a cloudy, vaguely greenish sort of crystal. It was the first thing we’d seen that wasn’t black rock.
“Think there’s a big vein of it? Maybe it’s valuable,” Nils said.
“If it is, it belongs to the Ganraen colonials. If they’re really here.” Deilani touched the edge of the crystal with her finger, and it crumbled away as fine dust. “Just as sturdy as the rest. Pretty, though.”
“I don’t see much going on down here; I don’t know what I expected. Let’s see how deep this shaft goes and pull out. Do any of you see any reason someone might want to blow all this up?”
“I got nothing, Admiral. It’s just a cave.” Nils put his hand on the wall. “Kind of a scary one, if I’m being honest. I don’t like small spaces.”
“Neither do I. Private?”
“No, Admiral.”
Salmagard took a light stick from her pouch and synced it to her suit’s AI. I watched her toss it over the ledge, into the dark. The light was bright, but it was quickly gone.
“Twenty meters.”
“The mist’s thinner down here. It’s thickest on the surface,” Deilani observed.
“Fifty meters. Impact,” Salmagard said.
“That’s it?”
“No, sir. It’s just bounced off something. Sixty.”
“Admiral,” Nils said, and I turned to him. He was staying well back from the ledge, looking up at the opening far above. I could hear his discomfort in his voice. This strange honeycomb of black gave me the creeps. Watching our lights play over the smooth walls, I saw more of the crystals.
“Yeah?”
“If there is a Ganraen colony here . . .”
“One hundred meters. Three impacts. What was that?”
“What?” I glanced back at Salmagard, who had cocked her head.
“I thought I saw something, but it’s nothing, sir.” She sounded sheepish.
I knew what she meant. The dark was oppressive. Black walls, moving lights. It was like the mist on the surface; it always looked as if there was something moving.
I turned back to Nils.
“The colonists might not know we’re here if these scanner issues are planet wide,” he continued.
“From what I remember, they are. They wrote this place off. Long list of reasons this wasn’t a good place to settle.”
“If they don’t know, then they’re not going to show up here unless we give them a reason to.”
“One hundred twenty-five meters,” Salmagard said.
“One second, Ensign.” I turned to Salmagard. “Is that it, Private?”
“Yes, Admiral. Full stop, but according to the short-range sonics there is at least another hundred-meter vertical. The shaft appears to widen farther down.”
I let out a low whistle. “That is a long way.” I edged back a little. “What were you saying, Ensign?”
“Sir, we could try to contact the Ganraens. Or at the very least get their attention.”
“With whom we were at war two weeks ago,” Deilani said. “If their flagship hadn’t crashed into their capitol dome, we still would be. Actually, we still are. Their surrender was only provisional. It’s a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. It’s not over until the Empress’ peace talks.”
I opened my mouth to change the subject, but Nils beat me to it.
“Lieutenant, these colonists may not even know about the cease-fire,” he pointed out, panning his light toward the surface. “But we have the law on our side. We’re not combatants under these circumstances.”
“What if they don’t see it that way?” Deilani asked.
“Their genes might not be as refined as Salmagard’s,” I said, “but they’re still just people. We’re all a long way from home out here. They’ll help us. At the very least they’ll be reasonable. And regardless of what they know about the war, if we play it right, I think they’ll welcome us with open arms. How do you want to get their attention, Nils?”
“The com array, sir.”
“The com array,” I burst out. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?”
“I think that’s what this is about. Look—we didn’t land here by choice. Something happened that made the ship land, probably system failure. Something went wrong, and the computer woke up Tremma. The only reason he could’ve had to set us down would be that he thought we weren’t safe flying—he must’ve been confused when he woke up to find us so far past our destination. He put down here. This spire”—I gestured—“must have seemed like a threat to our security scanner—if the rest of this planet is anything to go by, it wasn’t very stable. The landing made it worse, and the scanners picked up on the danger. Tremma didn’t want it falling on his ship. Definitely not on his com array—not with no shields, and him not knowing if he could even lift off this rock.”
“So they came out here to knock it down?”
“Our scanners don’t understand this stuff.” I touched the wall. “Whatever he used to calculate the charge placement was wrong; he did what he was trying to prevent. The spire dropped right across our back, and you can bet that’s where we picked up that damage. The upper decks are probably breached too. I wonder how much of this is piled up on the hull.”
“But it didn’t get the com array.”
“Probably not—so I guess they succeeded. Sort of.”
“They were probably treating it like, well, normal rock.”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. It felt good to have at least a measure of understanding of our circumstances. We knew where we were, and I was getting a feel for what had happened.
Now we were making progress.
“The scanners were acting up—okay, I’ll buy it. But it still doesn’t explain what killed them,” Deilani said.
“Fire killed them.”
“Shut up, Nils. You’re right, Lieutenant. And on that note, we’ve followed in their footsteps exactly. I wonder if we’re not walking the same path that got them into trouble. Lieutenant, my weapon.” I held out my hand. She hesitated, then ejected the magazine and handed it over. I tossed the sidearm into the pit. That was one less accident waiting to happen. Tremma’s incinerator unit had obviously been a liability, so a firearm was as well. We were better off without it.
“Admiral, I’m reading movement below.”
“It’s time to give the scanner a rest. Bad readings have wasted too much of our time already. Let’s get out of here.” I started the climb back up. The suit’s cling charge didn’t have much grip on the black rock, but there was no shortage of handholds. I was out of shape, but not so far gone that this feeble gravity could keep me down. The trick was not letting our wires get snagged. Easy on the way down, devilishly challenging on the way up.
At least the EVs were suited to this; the nanofabric was strong enough not to tear, and because the suits conformed perfectly to our bodies, there was nothing to snag on sharp outcroppings.<
br />
My soft lifestyle of late hadn’t done me any favors. We’d barely started, and I was already out of breath.
There was another tremor, and this time there was nothing subtle about it. The rock shuddered. One of my handholds came loose, and I barely kept hold. Deilani held grimly on, and Nils swore loudly. There was a crunch as something behind us gave, maybe the ledge we’d been standing on just a minute ago.
The shaking stopped. My helmet clearly picked up the crashing of everything knocked loose by the tremor.
My skin had gotten hot, and I’d begun to sweat. I kept my jaw tight, watching little shards of the mineral tumble down the slope, into the dark.
“Stay calm,” I said, trying to follow my own advice. “Just keep moving.”
Coming down here hadn’t been very bright. Nothing we were learning was making our predicament seem any less perilous. I had to do better.
It took several minutes to reach the surface. The others clambered out after me, and wasted no time putting a few meters between themselves and the pit.
So the spire had been sitting on this deep cavity. Interesting.
I took a few deep breaths, checked my oxygen levels, and began to climb out of the crater. I’d had enough of it out here. I wanted to get back to the ship, but we wouldn’t be going inside just yet.
“Let’s get back,” I told the trainees. “We need to visually confirm that the array is still intact. If it is, that might give us a play.”
“With the colonists?” Deilani asked, staggering after me.
“Nils is right. They’re our best chance.”
“What happened to waiting for rescue?” Nils was out of breath.
“The situation’s changed. Even if the Empire can track us here, which is by no means certain, it could take longer than I thought for them to get to us. Our chances are better with the colony.”
“Our chances of being executed,” Deilani said.
6
IT was easy to slide down the side of a ship. A lot of things were easy when gravity was on your side. The same could be said of time.
The climb back up the side of the freighter was arduous, but none of the trainees complained.