by Damon Alan
“Or you’ll blow up my tree?”
Coutts laughed out loud. “I like her, Lieutenant. You could do worse.”
Hamden pointed to the tent. “Get some rest, Torris. That’s an order.”
“Aye, sir,” she said, standing and saluting. She did a sharp military turn and marched off.
“You too, Sergeant,” Hamden ordered Coutts. “You’re first shift for sleeping. Someone has to be an adult on second watch, and I don’t want to hear your crap while I’m up anyway.”
Carzo moaned over by the fire, he’d been on the dig team, and probably hoped to bunk out first.
“You hurt my feelings, sir,” Coutts said.
“Liar. Get out of here.”
* * *
At night the forest was dark. The animals of the area didn’t seem to like their campsite. All the wildlife stayed away, even the insects, which Hamden thought was strange. It was possible he’d have to send the hunting crew further out if something about the site was keeping the animal life at bay.
“What are we watching for?” Carzo asked. “Nothing lives here but plants.”
“That’s not what the probes reported back. There are predators in every ecosystem, as well as some seriously large herbivores. This planet is what Earth would be if humans hadn’t changed it to our liking.”
“But none of them come here,” he insisted.
“Does it bother you at all that we don’t know why?” Hamden asked.
“Well, it didn’t,” Carzo replied. “But now it does.”
“Just keep your eyes open.”
The hours passed uneventfully, until it was time to wake Torris.
He sent the others, one at a time, to wake their tent partners. When it was his turn to do the same, Torris was awake when he lifted the tent flap and went inside.
She was also nude.
“I see you’re up,” Hamden said, then started to leave.
“Wait,” she said, then approached him. “I wanted to tell you that when we get back to the Stennis, you’re going to blow up my tree. Or me yours. I’m not sure which way this metaphor goes, but I know which way it sounds like it should go.”
He felt his face on fire again. More than his face. “We should probably call it something else,” he replied. “But whatever we call it, I like the idea.”
She stepped forward and slipped her arms around his waist. She was nearly as tall as him, so his cooperation wasn’t really needed. She kissed him full on the mouth, taking her time and making sure he didn’t miss any of the sensations it brought to his mind.
“I better get out there,” she said, “or Coutts will rib me all night.”
“Yeah. I—”
She kissed him again, quickly, then turned to her cot and grabbed her clothes. “You should get in bed.”
“I will when you come out to relieve me,” he said.
She laughed. “So much innuendo that I’m just letting pass on by…”
“Save it for later,” he said as he slipped back out through the flap.
* * *
Two days later they were through the jungle floor, digging had reached a strange material two meters down. Getting there had been an exercise in determination, plant roots impeded every push of the shovel into dirt. The material they found was unnaturally flat, it felt soft and grippy to the probe of a shovel, but when the shovel was removed not a mark remained on the surface.
Smits wanted to shoot it, or blow a hole in it.
Hamden nixed that idea.
“Dig out a larger area,” he ordered. “Once we have three or four square meters uncovered, we’ll see about cutting into it.”
Whatever it was, the ground penetrating radar said it was hollow and cube shaped. He wondered if there was a door on the side that would allow entry. If they couldn’t find a way in, they might have to dig out the entire structure and see if a door existed anywhere on the sides.
Several more hours were spent enlarging the hole, which went quicker because all eight of them dug.
Two hours before nightfall, Hamden was satisfied. They’d spend the next sixteen hours on guard duty and resting, then see about opening this surprise when the sun rose tomorrow. They climbed out of the hole and got cleaned up. Dinner, a half hour of conversation, and then the first sleep crew was out like babies.
Hamden went to the shuttle, now a mere fifty meters away. Inside he called the Stennis to report their progress.
“Stennis, this is shuttle 19C, Lieutenant Hamden, over.”
“19C, Stennis, Captain Kuo, over.”
“Time for the ground team’s nightly report,” he said, then relayed their discovery of the layer and expansion of the hole.
“Very well, Lieutenant. I have someone on board that would like to speak to you.”
“Yes, sir,” Hamden responded, puzzled.
“Ton Hamden, this is Emille Sur’batti.”
The adept? What could she possible want with him? The woman terrified him. She possessed some mystical ability to move their starship from one galaxy to the next, she could burn anyone to ash on a whim, what wasn’t to fear? Not that he’d ever let that show on the outside.
“I’m sensing some very strange… emanations? Not sure if that is the word. I’m worried about the feelings I am getting when I concentrate on the area you and your team are in. Something is down there with you,” she said.
“Like what, sir?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I want you to be very conscious of your every move. I don’t think this world is what it seems.”
“Do you have any advice?” he asked.
“I wish I did. Just know something isn’t right. So be careful,” she recommended.
“I’ll do that. Thanks for the warning,” he said, puzzled.
“Kuo back on, Lieutenant. You heard her. I don’t know a lot about these adepts yet, but Admiral Dayson seems to put a lot of stock in them. I know you’re close to the Admiral, and if you were killed without me mentioning Emille’s concerns, Sarah would be very unhappy with me. Then I’d be very unhappy with myself.”
“I appreciate your concern sir, thank you for sharing.” Hamden really liked Kuo. They’d hit it off since the attack on Strick Isle, and he wanted their friendship to grow. He was pretty sure Kuo felt the same, maybe because Hamden was the face of his rescue from the Komi.
“Good luck. I’m very curious about what you’ll find. Stennis out.”
“As are we all, sir,” Hamden said. “19C out.”
* * *
Hamden was getting dressed when Torris burst into the tent, which would have scared the pants off him were he wearing any.
“Get dressed. You need to see this,” she gasped. She’d clearly run to his tent as fast as she could. Being in space a while tends to wind a person until they’ve acclimated again to gravity.
“Sit down while I dress,” he said. He grabbed his pants from the cot. “What’s going on?”
“You’ll have to see it.”
“Not anything dangerous?”
She shook her head, then concentrated on breathing.
If it wasn’t dangerous, he could at least put on his uniform properly. By the time he was done, Torris had left the tent and was waiting outside for him.
She grabbed his hand and dragged him along.
With his free hand he loosened the strap on his fléchette pistol.
She led him to the dig pit, the entire crew was gathered around it, looking in. As Hamden got close he saw the reason. The flat material they’d discovered and cleared off had opened up. A perfect circle sat dead in the center of the area they’d excavated.
“Have any of you been watching the perimeter?” he asked his team.
They shook their heads no, eyes expressing their expectations of a dressing down. Which was what he should do, but wasn’t going to. The hole in the material was the first sign of activity they’d seen other than the occasional bird flying overhead.
“It’s not like we’ve been threatene
d here in anyway,” he said, “so I can understand the temptation to relax. But if it happens again, you’ll all be on report.”
Nods all around. “Whatever is in there, sir, the local wildlife respects it enough not to come around,” Coutts said.
“Scared, sergeant?” Hamden asked.
“Hive, I get. Humans being jackasses, I get,” she answered. “I don’t get this.”
“Neither do I,” he admitted. “But that’s our job, and why we’re here.” He pulled his pistol and stepped toward the opening. He was surprised to see a ladder disappearing down into the darkness.
“Hah, you can’t see that from your side, Lieutenant,” Smits said. “Until you get right up on it. I wanted to climb down, but the others said no.”
“To keep your stupid from killing you,” Coutts snapped at him.
“I’ll be stupid,” Hamden offered, then lay down and scooted his legs over the hole. Once he had purchase on the ladder with his feet, he started moving down.
When his head cleared the ceiling, the room he’d entered illuminated. The lighting was perfect for human eyesight.
The room was barren of furniture or equipment. It had murals on every wall. Disturbingly familiar murals. The depiction was of space, which was dark indigo in the representation, and several ships were painted in different locations on the mural. Only a small section was unpainted, an arch on the wall behind him as he came down the ladder.
He recognized the Stennis, or at least a similar FTL battlecruiser. And the Gaia.
“What the…” he muttered as he walked closer to inspect the mural.
Several smaller ships were depicted as flitting around the scene. Alliance shuttles. The new fighters Peter Corriea had designed. And prominently displayed toward the floor, on one wall, was a planet. In front the planet was a shuttle painted in more detail than the rest.
19C.
“Carzo, Coutts, you stand guard up top. Everyone else come down here.”
They joined him quickly, guns at the ready. He watched them one by one as they realized what they were looking at and the tips of the guns lowered as they wondered.
“What is this insanity?” Smits said.
“Look at that,” Hamden said, pointing to 19C. “Maduro, get your helmet cam on that. Take it all in. We want command to see this, otherwise they’ll think we were doing drugs.”
The rest of the team gathered around the shuttle depiction, staring in awe. As they did, Hamden walked to the unpainted section. When he got one meter away, the material dilated quickly into an opening that a human could comfortable walk through. The edge of the now open arch matched the edge of the mural perfectly.
“Next room, I’m going in,” he called out to the others.
More loud than they should have been, they surged forward behind him. As they did he stepped through. The room lit up when he entered, just like the last. It was much larger than the mural room. Huge in fact. The floor he was on went out five meters, then ended in a railing. Beyond that he could see extensive equipment, ducting, wiring, electronics. To his right the platform was eight meters long, ending in a railing that looked out over that end of the room.
A small dais was centered on the floor about a meter from the far railing, floating a few dozen centimeters off the floor. Antigravity? Was that even possible?
As Hamden walked toward the strange platform, which looked like a lectern. A small creature skittered along the wall, rising from below, then stopped a few meters beyond the end of the platform nearest them. His team was at the nearest section of railing, staring at the creature.
“I’ve seen those before,” Vallat said.
Hamden was staring at the dais, but he turned to look as Vallat spoke. He was pointing at the creature. Eight legs. Mechanical eyes.
“You’re full of it,” Smits said.
“I was on the Gaia during the return trip from Backwater. That thing, or a few thousand just like it, were all over that ship.”
Hamden walked toward him, grabbing Vallat’s arm. “You serious, corporal?”
“Dead serious, sir,” he said, tossing Hamden a puzzled look.
“You’re not just messing with Smits? Because I mess with Smits all the time.”
Vallat shook his head no. “What’s this all mean?”
Hamden didn’t know, but he had to comfort his team with something. “Gaia is related to this mess somehow, and… I don’t know. Whoever made this knows about the Stennis, us, our coming here… we need to figure this out,” he replied. He looked at the spider. “It’s just watching us. Vallat, if it looks like it’s getting hostile, shoot it.”
“Not sure if that’s a good idea,” Torris said. “That’s the fusion reactor we detected from orbit, right there.” She pointed at the largest piece of machinery past the railing. “Break that containment, we’re all plasma.”
“New orders,” Hamden said. “Hostilities break out for any reason, we run to the next room and defend it as we evacuate.”
Everyone nodded at that, then their eyes opened wide and more than one gun rose to ready position.
“Zu nugattis vol demarr,” a voice said behind him.
He whipped around. A hologram floated in front of the dais. It was mostly human, although it was rendered with errors. The image glitched constantly, sometimes even disappearing and reappearing a fraction of a second later.
“Zebet,” it said before bowing. “Sum cood de vol makus.”
“That’s brainer speak,” Smits said.
“Shut up, stupid,” Hamden hissed. “It’s Zeffulti.” He keyed the mic clipped to his shirt. “Stennis, I need to talk to Emille or Alarin Sur’batti right now.”
“Putting you through,” Seto’s voice said. “The bridge will be on the channel as well.”
“Emille on,” a soft voice said. “You’ve found what I warned you about, didn’t you?”
“I need you to say a greeting in Alarin Sur’batti’s language,” Hamden said.
“Zu demarr,” Emille said, her voice sounding puzzled.
“Zu demarr!” the hologram exclaimed.
Chapter 41 - A Wisp of Time
32 Febbed 15332
Emille was in her quarters when the call came in. A fairly lavish suite she shared with Alarin just off the flight control deck. She was well aware that not even Sarah Dayson had quarters like she shared with her man.
Still, they felt cramped at times. When she wasn’t directing her adept swarm, or the Stennis wasn’t engaged in anything out of the ordinary, she had nothing to do.
The call was something of a relief, if at first mystifying. The expedition was alive, she wasn’t sure if that surprised her or not. The world below the Stennis made her nervous. The call immediately took a strange turn. Why would Hamden want her to say a greeting in Zeffulti?”
“Zu demarr,” she said uncertainly.
“Zu demarr!” a voice said in return. She didn’t recognize the speaker. Immediately she rose into a state of expanded consciousness, her awareness sweeping past the hull of the ship and toward the planet below. While she still couldn’t read the minds of the newcomers without Alarin’s help, she could certainly detect their presence. Consciousness was a beacon in the darkness when one knew what to look for. Even the ungifted created a zone of effect when they processed the world around them.
She sensed the reactor containing the essence of Faroo. She sensed the members of the investigation team.
But nobody else. Was there an adept down there shielding their mind from detection?
“Who is this?” she asked in Zeffulti.
“I am the warden of this place, what your friends would call an AI,” the voice said. “I have been waiting a very long time for you.”
“Me?”
“You, Alarin Sur’batti, and all the others on the Michael Stennis. It is a ship that is legendary far after its destruction.”
“Destruction? You’re making no sense,” she said. “The Stennis is intact. I’m within it right now.”
“Keep going,” she urged. It was true, therefore bore no insult. She did evolve with the arrival and acceptance of the newcomers.
“I am the creation of your descendant, Theramakrommis Zerron,” the voice said, complying with her. “I both do not exist yet, but have existed for nearly a hundred and seventy millenia.”
She had to think about that, but then the solution dawned on her. “You’ve come through time?”
“Correct, ancestor,” the AI said. “I am created nearly seventeen millenia from now. But as I said, you are aware of the fourth dimension of existence. You manipulate it well, far better than any other in this time period.”
“You’re talking about space-time.”
“I am. You manipulate space. But there is a different coordinate that you have been ignoring as you manipulate the spatial coordinates of matter. The time coordinate.”
“I…” She looked at the radio speaker in front of her. There it was. Part of the universal net of information that revealed location, the time location factor was small and running behind the much more apparent information for spatial coordinates.
“You have verified my statement by now,” the AI said. “You now know the likely truth of what I say, so you will listen to the rest of what I share with you. Words that are also the truth.”
“Which is?”
“This world was terraformed for Sarah Dayson’s people. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is welcome to colonize it as an embassy to the greater universe. But they, and their violence, must not be allowed to leave the Milky Way otherwise. That galaxy belongs to them. The universe belongs to your species.”
She was silent. The machine from the future spoke, expecting compliance, because that compliance would serve the future it came from. But denying Sarah’s people their freedom felt like betrayal. The newcomers were no longer aliens, but friends.
“The future already indicates you accept what I say,” the voice insisted.
“I will discuss it with Sarah Dayson. I do not dictate terms to that woman.”