by Ryk Brown
* * *
The snow wall on their left suddenly collapsed, revealing a short tunnel that led into the stone wall.
“Stop! Stop!” Jessica ordered. Mister Taves deactivated the weapon. “I think this is it!” She looked about at the snow still piled up around the entrance to the tunnel. “Clear all of this. That snow piles up fast, and we don’t want to get buried inside.”
As Mister Taves continued using the weapon to melt the snow away from the entrance, Jessica and the two Corinairans proceeded into the tunnel. The tunnel darkened as they approached the far end. Jessica switched on the chest-mounted lighting panel, casting a pale white glow in front of her. Her light revealed a large wooden door built of vertical strips of heavy lumber. The strips were held together with rusted, iron straps, with heavy hand-forged rivets holding them in place. The door reminded Jessica of the old fortresses built by the early villages that formed in the first century after the bio-digital plague back on Earth. She had seen the images in school in the holo-suites used to educate children in groups. From the Data Ark, they had learned that such fortresses had been built by humans on Earth a thousand years before the great plague.
“Should I be recording this?” one of the Corinairans asked.
Jessica turned to look at him, taking note of the name on his helmet. “What do you think, Mister Soutter?”
“I should be recording this.”
Jessica turned back around to face the door as Mister Soutter’s chest-mounted lighting plate also snapped on, casting its own pale, white light in addition to Jessica’s. She stepped forward and pulled at the great door, but it did not move. She pulled again and again, but it was stuck.
“The hinges are probably frozen shut,” Mister Taves commented as his own light panel came to life.
“Or rusted in place,” Jessica added. “How are we going to get it open?”
Taves held up the weapon that he had been using to carve away the snow. “This weapon has many useful settings,” he proclaimed with no small amount of pride. He stepped forward and made several more adjustments to the weapon’s power settings and the tip of its barrel. He took aim and fired at the door, this time sending a narrow, precise beam of red light that burned a clean line through the heavy door. The tunnel began to fill with smoke. Mister Taves struggled to see clearly, hoping to avoid the uppermost metal strap for fear of collapsing the entire door. Within minutes, he had completed a clean cut across the door at about shoulder height just below the uppermost iron strap. After another minute, he’d managed to cut through the iron strap at the bottom. “Give me a hand,” he said as he handed the weapon back to Jessica.
Mister Soutter and his fellow Corinairan, Mister Kilbore, stepped up on either side of the Takaran. Together, they pushed inward on the cut door timbers, slowly forcing them to move until they finally fell inward.
Jessica crouched down and leaned inward through the shoulder high opening. She shined a handheld light about the space on the other side. There appeared to be several pieces of equipment, all in various states of disrepair. The room was dusty and frozen with icicles hanging from the beams as well as from points on various pieces of equipment where they had once leaked fluid.
“This place hasn’t seen light in years,” Mister Soutter commented as he peered from behind Jessica.
“More like centuries,” she corrected as she advanced through the opening, stepping over the fallen door timbers. “Waddell, Nash. I’m stepping inside. How do you copy?”
“Loud and clear, Lieutenant Commander.”
“I’ll check back with you every few minutes.”
“Understood.”
Jessica slowly made her way deeper into the dark room, followed closely by her three team members.
“It looks like an entry chamber,” Mister Taves said. “There are stalls along that wall, as if to hold cold weather gear,” he explained, pointing to the far wall. “And those appear to be tool lockers.”
“If those are cold weather gear stalls, where is the cold weather gear?” Mister Soutter wondered.
“Maybe this is just some sort of outpost?” Jessica said. She came to another door at the far end of the room. “If you’re right, then this must be the inner door.”
Mister Taves examined the second door. “Its construction is similar to the outer door, only smaller. Odd that there are no latches or other mechanisms for securing the doors.”
“The wind blows inward from the outside,” Mister Soutter noted. “They probably didn’t need a way to secure the doors.”
Jessica ignored their debate, pulling the door outward. Its hinges creaked and moaned as the door resisted her efforts. Finally, it gave in and opened. Jessica moved through the inner doorway, confirming her connectivity with Major Waddell and his security teams on the outside as she made her way forward. She paused just after stepping through the doorway, shining her light both left and right. “It’s a corridor,” she told the others. “It goes off nearly perpendicular to the right and at about a forty-five degree angle to the left.”
“It must connect with the other buildings,” Mister Taves said. “There were at least five more rectangular hills in the overhead optical scans of the surface.”
“Taves, with me,” Jessica ordered. “Soutter, Kilbore, head right. Check in every five minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” Mister Soutter answered.
Jessica watched for a moment as Soutter and Kilbore headed down the right corridor, their suit lights quickly fading into the darkness. She turned and started down the corridor to their left, shining her light from side to side. She did not care for the illumination provided by the panels on the chest of her cold weather garment, as the light was pale, which made it difficult to pick out details.
The corridor was long and featureless other than the pattern of stones that formed the walls. There were light panels every five meters, interconnected by conduit that ran along the upper edges of the wall. The floor appeared to also be made of stone. However, it was smooth and seamless as if cast as one long piece. The colonists must have had considerable technology available to them at some point, as well as the knowledge to use it.
After a few minutes, they came to another door, this time with a sign on the wall next to the door. The sign was carved out of wood, the letters filled in with some type of dye.
“Control room,” Jessica announced.
“What?” Mister Taves asked.
Jessica pointed at the sign. “I thought you guys already learned how to read Angla.”
“That is not Angla,” Mister Taves objected over the comm-set. He studied the sign further. “However, it does bear some resemblance.”
Jessica opened the door and entered the control room. Inside, there were several consoles. They did not appear to be designed specifically for the space, but rather, they looked as if they had been scavenged from a ship of some type and installed here. It occurred to her that most of the technology she had seen so far could easily have been scavenged from a spaceship. She moved deeper into the room, approaching what appeared to be the main console on the far side. She came up behind the high-backed chair in front of the console, slowly turning it around to face her. In the chair sat a middle-aged man huddled in a heavy parka. His hands were clad in gloves and several strips of cloth. His legs were covered by several blankets, each wrapped tightly around his lower extremities. His eyes were half open, and his mouth slightly agape. His skin was pale and ghostly with a fine layer of gray-white ice crystals covering every surface of his body. “I’ve got a body,” Jessica stated calmly.
“There are two more over here,” Mister Taves stated over the comm-set. “They appear to be frozen.”
“Lieutenant Commander Nash, this is Soutter,” Mister Soutter called over the comm-set. His voice had a twinge of panic in its tone.
“Go ahead,” Jessica answered.
“We’ve got bodies over here,” he announced over the comm-set. “There are at least ten of them so far. They’re all frozen, s
ir.”
“Copy that. We’ve got some as well,” Jessica answered. “Keep pushing forward, and keep a body count as you go, and record everything, Mister Soutter.” Jessica turned to Mister Taves. “See if you can find a data core or something. There’s got to be a log file around here somewhere.”
* * *
Nathan stood in the main hangar deck as the landing shuttle rolled to a stop and began cycling down its engines. The shuttle looked weather beaten and worn, as did the landing party as they disembarked still clad in their cold weather gear with their hoods back and their air masks dangling from their necks. Jessica separated from the group, veering over to her captain with a case in her left hand.
“Lieutenant Commander,” Nathan greeted.
“Sir.”
“Rough trip?”
“I’ve had rougher.”
“Well?”
“They’re all dead, sir. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Were they from the Jasper?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Maybe, or maybe their descendants.”
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the case in her left hand.
“We pulled what we think is a data core. I don’t know if it still works.”
“Give it to Cheng’s people,” Nathan instructed.
“Mister Taves offered to take a crack at it,” Jessica told him.
“Give it to Vlad first. I suspect it’s closer to our technology than the Takarans’ anyway.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nathan noticed Jessica wasn’t herself. She seemed emotionally drained. “You okay?”
“Like I said, it was not pretty.”
“Care to talk about it?”
“Not really, Nathan,” she told him, “at least not now. Maybe later, after a long hot shower and some chow.” Jessica pulled a data module from the chest piece on her cold weather suit and handed it to Nathan. “We recorded everything we saw.”
Nathan looked at the data module in his hand, wondering what was stored on the device.
“Those people never had a chance down there,” Jessica told him, “not in that cold.”
“Makes you wonder why they even went down there to begin with,” Nathan said.
“Yes, sir, it does.”
“Take some down time, Lieutenant Commander. I’ll take a look at the recordings, and we’ll talk later.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Nathan sat in his ready room, transfixed by the images shown on the large view screen built into the forward bulkhead. Emaciated humans with sunken eyes and cheeks, wrapped in layers upon layers of well-worn clothing and blankets. There were many signs of technology: electrical, electronics, even a fusion generator. However, many of these items appeared to have been scavenged from systems not intended for use on the surface. They were too diverse, and in many places had been joined together in haphazard fashion. Nathan was sure that most of the components had come from one or more shuttles, possibly the one that had brought them down to the surface.
The worst images were those of the carcasses of the dead, most of which had been carefully butchered as if to be consumed. When he first saw the carcasses, Nathan couldn’t believe it. He was sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. There were so many of them. They had been so desperate that they had abandoned all decency, leaving the carcasses lying in a cold room where they would quickly freeze and not smell. In the end, they must have fallen deeper into despair as they no longer bothered disposing of the carcasses, leaving them lying about. Perhaps they were too weak to drag them into storage. Nathan could only hope that had been the case.
“Captain?” Cameron called from the hatchway.
Nathan paused the video playback. “Yes, Commander?”
“Medical has finished with the tissue samples brought back from the surface. There were no signs of the plague.”
“Well, we didn’t expect any. The biological version cannot survive in sub-zero temperatures. That much we do know.” Nathan sighed. “What about the data core?”
“Vlad is working on it now. He’s going to link it up with a data pad instead of our own systems, just to be safe.”
“Very well.”
“Is everything all right?”
“These people didn’t die of the plague, Commander. They were alive long enough to build heavy stone shelters. They were able to make use of technology from disabled shuttles; at least, I think that’s where they got it. When they died, they were cold, starving, and desperate. You can see it in their frozen expressions. What I don’t get is why they settled in such an unforgiving environment. Why not closer to the planet’s equator where it’s warmer?”
“Yosef says there’s evidence of heavy lava flows all over the central latitudes. She thinks there was considerable volcanic activity some time ago.”
“Then why not settle on the edge or a few hundred kilometers away from the flows? It would still have to be warmer.”
“Maybe the site was more habitable when they landed,” Cameron theorized. “It is in the middle latitudes.”
“Well tell Vlad to get on that core,” Nathan urged. “I want to know what happened to these people.”
“Why is it so important to you?” Cameron wondered.
Nathan jumped the paused video image back a few frames, stopping on a shot of one of the neatly carved bodies. “These people were forced to eat each other, Commander, while everything they needed was sitting in orbit above them.”
“Understood,” Cameron answered. “In the meantime, we’ve finished off-loading what usable propellant was left on the Jasper. Perhaps we should be moving on.”
“How’s our propellant level?”
“Twenty-two percent of capacity,” Cameron answered. “We gained about ten percent by coming here.”
“Very well. Make way as soon as possible.”
“Aye, sir.” Cameron glanced at the horrible image on the screen, quickly turning her head away to exit the ready room.
Nathan continued watching the video playback, feeling compelled to witness what the passengers of the Jasper had gone through. He was enraged at what had happened on the surface below him so many centuries ago. He was also frustrated that there was nothing he could do about it. Those people died, perhaps needlessly, and there would be no one to hold accountable for their deaths. It made him wonder, in the end, who would be held accountable for all the deaths both on the Aurora and in her wake.
CHAPTER SIX
“Cheng,” Nathan greeted as he entered the port torpedo room. “Something to show me?”
“Yes, Captain,” Vladimir stated. “Lieutenant Montgomery and his team have completed the first tube refit. Torpedo tube number two is now configured to fire plasma cannon shots.”
“Wonderful,” Nathan answered, albeit with some skepticism in his voice. “How does it work?”
“Well, our final design was a bit different than our first conceptual drawings,” Lieutenant Montgomery explained. “To make a long story short, we had to make the cannon a bit smaller in order to fit it inside the existing outer tube sleeve. While this does decrease the potential strike power of the weapon to some degree, it gives us room to gimble the cannon within the tube.”
“This means we no longer have to be pointed exactly at the target when firing,” Vladimir elaborated. “We just have to be pointed in the close vicinity of the target.”
“How close?” Nathan asked.
“The more distant the target, the less accurately the ship needs to point,” Lieutenant Montgomery explained.
“And this weapon will work?”
“We will need to conduct a series of test shots at targets positioned at exact locations in relation to the weapon in order to calibrate the targeting systems,” Vladimir told him. “However, the weapon is ready to fire, sir.”
“What did you say the effective range of the weapon is?” Nathan asked.
“Five hundred kilometers,” Lieutenant Montgomery answered. “After that, the
plasma shot begins to spread out and weaken rather rapidly.”
“Tactical, Captain,” Nathan called over his comm-set.
“Captain, go for Tactical,” Mister Randeen answered.
“Threat board?”
“All clear, sir.”
“Do we have any training flights out?”
“No, sir. They landed ten minutes ago. We’re at red deck.”
“Very well. We’re about to fire a test shot of the plasma cannon out of the number two torpedo tube. Please track the flight path and intensity of the shot. Send the results to the port torpedo room.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Gentlemen, you may take a test shot,” Nathan announced.
“Very well, sir,” Lieutenant Montgomery responded. “If everyone will please clear the chamber, we will proceed.”
Nathan and the others turned and withdrew to the next compartment, after which, the large door that separated the torpedo tube chamber from the main torpedo room lowered into place.
“Charge the weapon to ten percent,” Lieutenant Montgomery ordered his crew.
“Only ten percent?” Nathan wondered.
“There is no need to fire at full power on the first shot,” Vladimir said. “That would be an unnecessary risk.”
“Of course,” Nathan said, trying not to appear as dumb as he felt.
“Tube room sealed,” the Takaran technician reported. “Tube two charged at ten percent. Outer doors are open. All systems report weapon is ready to fire.”
“Fire the weapon,” Lieutenant Montgomery ordered.
“Firing weapon.”
A muffled hum sounded from the tube room on the other side of the heavy door. The hum quickly grew in intensity but, within a second, was replaced with a thwang that shook the room and would have been deafening had they not been separated from the weapon by the heavy door. As the weapon fired, Nathan was sure he felt every hair on his body tingle for a moment.
“Firing cycle complete. Charge expended. Taking the weapon offline,” the technician reported.