What were the chances?
I tried not to get my hopes up. Bertrand could have hit the nail on the head: it could have been abandoned. The remains of an operation that had taken place centuries before.
“We received a communication from Earth half an hour ago. All mining operations are to continue on schedule.”
“You received a communication from Earth?” I said. “How is that possible? I thought communication couldn’t reach us faster than light? Wouldn’t it take forty years for a message from Earth to reach us?”
Thomas said, “The quantum broadcaster allows for instantaneous communication.”
“Quantum broadcaster?”
“Yes, it’s a system that we can use to communicate simple, prearranged questions and answers. The condensed version is that it operates by means of quantum entanglement. An ensemble of entangled particles exists on our broadcaster here on the ship, and there entangled brethren live in a duplicate device on Earth. By measuring one entangled particle in a particular manner, it affects its entangled particle on the other end. Instantaneously.”
“I don’t get it,” Harper said.
Thomas sighed. “You don’t really need to get it.”
“Sounds like a magic eight ball,” Flynn said.
“There are a limited number of questions you can give it, and a corresponding set of answers,” Thomas explained. “Mostly yes and no answers.”
“So you told it we had discovered a race of aliens that were also mining for diamonds and it answered back that we should go about business as usual?”
Thomas smiled. “In a much simpler fashion, yes.”
“I’m sending a team down,” Hayes said.
“Shouldn’t we wait to see what the probe finds?” Gloria asked.
“I want eyes on the ground. Recon only.”
“And if there’s life down there?”
“Nobody makes contact. And let me make that crystal clear. No contact.”
“We’ve proven they have weapons,” I said.
“We haven’t proven anything,” Bertrand said. “We can’t say with certainty that the artifact we found belongs to whoever set up the mining operation.”
“It’s a safe bet.”
“That’s why we’re playing it safe,” Hayes said.
Flynn said, “No contact. Got it, Captain.”
I had forgotten to breathe. I took a breath. Part of me thought that none of this was real. That I was still in stasis having a lucid dream.
“So one question,” Flynn said. “Who’s going down there?”
CHAPTER 13
Hayes selected Perkins, Harper, and I without hesitation. Jin and Gloria were our transport. They would take us in the rover and remain there in case things got hairy. Nobody moaned, nobody whined. At least not while we were still in the Captain’s presence. And since Harper had been picked, I knew I wouldn’t have to suffer one of his longwinded rants about alleged favoritism.
“Guess that leaves Yuri and me to toss a few back in Finnigan’s,” Flynn said, acting like he didn’t give two shits.
Bertrand said, “I want someone down there to represent the science team.”
“Not a chance,” Hayes said. “Your people aren’t trained for this sort of thing.”
“We should have someone there.”
“I’ll go,” Davidson said.
Bertrand glanced at Hayes. There was a silent war going on between the two men. “Peter will accompany your team.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me. My security team goes. Alone.”
I didn’t care whether Davidson was allowed to go or not. I was just elated over being chosen. I forgot all about how Hayes had pissed me off earlier. It was a thing of the past. No reason to hold a grudge. A small knot of tension formed in my stomach when I considered what I might find, but my excitement overshadowed it.
“Statute three-one-nine, subsection A,” Bertrand said. “In the event that an alien presence is…”
“Don’t quote the policy manual to me,” Hayes said.
Bertrand was holding his own. As the ship’s top science geek, I would have expected the man to crumble under Hayes’s glare, but he had a surprisingly steely resolve. I wasn’t sure if a rivalry had existed between the two men prior to this, but neither gave an indication of backing down. From the sounds of it, Bertrand had protocol on his side, and if nothing else, I suspected that Hayes would continue to try to maintain as small a rift as possible between the two teams.
Hayes leaned back in his chair and I knew then that he was going to acquiesce.
“Fine,” Hayes said. “Have it your way. Your man can go. But he takes orders from my guys while he’s down there.” Hayes shifted his gaze from Bertrand to Davidson.
Davidson said, “I’m willing to do that.”
“It’s settled then,” Bertrand said. To his credit, he didn’t sound smug, and he didn’t revel in the victory.
Smart, too, I thought. Hayes would have squashed the man hands down if it had come down to a fistfight.
Hayes stood up from his chair. “I want suitcams active for the duration. I’ll be monitoring the feeds.”
“That goes for you too,” Bertrand said, looking at Davidson. It was an unnecessary statement, and it almost came off as a kind of subtle peace offering to Hayes; a way of saying their disagreement of several minutes ago was water under the bridge, no hard feelings.
“Everybody move out.”
We had suited up and departed the Astraeus within half an hour. I didn’t know about the other guys, but I was a little nervous. I wasn’t sure what we might find. Flynn had remarked that we should just have the carrier ship come down in the alien operation zone rather than come down on our side and have to climb the ridge, but Perkins killed that idea. “We don’t know what’s over that ridge,” Perkins said. “Could be hostiles. We’ve potentially seen what their weapons look like, and we don’t have anything near as lethal to defend ourselves with.”
By the time we landed the sky was full-on dark again. We activated our suit lights as well as our cams. Not only would everything be recorded, but a live feed would also be transmitted back to the Astraeus so Hayes could watch it all in real-time. I reminded myself to watch what I said since Hayes would also be monitoring our communications.
The five of us piled into one of the armored rovers. Jin and Gloria in the front, the rest of us in the back.
The rover was built for tough conditions and was heavier to account for the lower gravity. It moved slowly, but was still faster and more efficient than going on foot.
After ten minutes, we reached the base of the ridge. Jin parked the rover close enough so that we wouldn’t have to contend with all the loose rock.
I double-checked my duty belt before we exited the rover. I had my zip-tie cuffs and restraint foam pushed toward the back. My stun baton rested near my right hip. I wanted to keep it handy. We were under orders to avoid contact if we were confronted with any signs of life, and although I didn’t expect to find any, I felt better having the baton handy.
“Good luck,” Gloria said as Perkins, Harper, Davidson and I got out.
Perkins was in the lead. We tried to take the path of least resistance, but the ridge wouldn’t cooperate. It was a rough hike. As soon as we would find a relatively easy path, it would end and we would be forced to climb over a patch of jagged rock before we could find another. The fact we were making the climb in the dark didn’t help matters.
By the end of it, I was exhausted, powered by adrenaline alone. Thankfully, the top of the ridge was somewhat flat. Perkins went down on his belly and we followed his example, using our elbows to pull ourselves forward until we could see over the other side.
Perkins removed his pack and brought out a pair of night vision binoculars. We waited while he surveyed the area.
“Anyth
ing?” I asked.
Perkins shook his head.
“What do we do?” Harper asked.
Perkins didn’t reply right away. Over the com he said, “No visible activity. Looks deserted.”
Hayes’s voice came over our coms. “Proceed with caution.”
“You heard the man,” Perkins said. “Let’s keep moving. Going down will be tougher, so watch your step.”
We descended the ridge.
Perkins hadn’t been lying when he said the way down would be harder. This side of the ridge was steeper and less forgiving than the other. As careful as I tried to be, I slipped on several occasions, nearly pitching myself forward into the darkness. Our suits wouldn’t do much good if one of us fell. If we survived the fall, the jagged rock would probably compromise our suits and we would die within seconds from asphyxiation or extreme heat. My money was on the heat. At eight hundred degrees, a single breath would fry our insides.
Nearly an hour had passed by the time we reached the bottom. Our suits were black with smeared graphite. Perkins had us take a five minute breather and I drank water through the tube that snaked its way up the side of my neck and into my helmet. It was warm, but I didn’t care. I concentrated on taking small sips. A stomach full of sloshing water wouldn’t make the going any easier.
“Let’s go,” Perkins said. “It’s a kilometer walk to the site.”
The ground felt soft under my feet. There was a faint wind coming in from the east.
“Does anybody else think this is unbelievable?” Harper asked. “I mean, we might actually be the first human beings to come into contact with alien life.”
“Hayes said no contact,” Perkins reiterated.
“Yeah, yeah, I know that, but still…”
“Conserve your air.”
I shared in Harper’s excitement, but I was smart enough to keep myself from talking a mile a minute even though my mind was racing twice as fast. Part of me wanted to join in on Harper’s enthusiasm, but I remembered the company I was in. Perkins had nerves at least as hard as the diamond buried beneath our feet.
When we had less than half a kilometer to go, Hayes’s voice came over the com. “We aren’t getting anything on the video, but the probe’s picking up sporadic thermal activity. Could be something in the geology throwing the sensors off, but stay sharp.”
I brushed my hand over my stun baton, making sure it was still there. Right about then, I wished we had been equipped with something more substantial. Like a gun. In my head, I kept replaying the memory of Bertrand finding the artifact. It made my stun baton seem as dangerous as a child’s toy. It could incapacitate a two hundred pound man for a few minutes, but it wasn’t capable of inflicting lethal damage.
Part of our training had been to take a shock from a baton so we knew what it felt like. In the unlikely event that we were disarmed and had our own weapon used against us, we needed to know what we were up against. It had been like taking a punch over my entire body. It had brought me to my knees and made me piss my pants, but it hadn’t knocked me unconscious. My legs had been Jell-O for a minute or two afterward, but that was about the extent of it. A blow from the weapon Bertrand had uncovered wouldn’t be anywhere near as forgiving.
Perkins said, “We’re within proximity. Eyes open, people.”
The lights on my suit caught something large in the distance. It looked like the bulky skeleton of a dinosaur; like something that belonged in a museum. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was a vehicle similar to one of our dump trucks. It was larger, and instead of metal it appeared to be composed of a chalky, porous material.
“Bone?” Harper whispered over the com.
Harper ran his hand over a lower section that jutted out just above one of the treaded tires.
“Don’t touch anything,” Perkins said.
“I’m not hurting anything,” Perkins said, but pulled his hand away.
It was like being in huge graveyard. We were surrounded by alien machinery that in the darkness could have been the remains of ancient mammoths.
“You getting this?”
“Copy that,” Hayes said.
We moved past the machinery and to the edge of the giant pit. Our light couldn’t penetrate the darkness far enough to see to the bottom. I gazed down into the blackness.
“Don’t get too close,” Perkins said.
Davidson stood next to me. “I don’t understand it,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The technology doesn’t match up. It’s too primitive.”
“It doesn’t look primitive to me,” I said.
“That’s not what I mean. This technology is at least as sophisticated as ours. There are substantial differences in design and composition, but the fact that we know what it was made for means they aren’t necessarily more advanced than us.”
“So what doesn’t it match up with?”
“I can’t really say. Things that we’ve encountered before this.”
I knew what he was getting at. He meant the Alcubierre drive that had gotten us here. That technology far surpassed what we were currently looking at. That’s what Davidson was using as a comparison even if he couldn’t come right out and say it. I knew both Hayes and Bertrand would be listening.
“What did you expect to find?”
“I don’t know. Not this.”
We joined Perkins where he stood by one of the massive dump trucks.
“Looks like it’s deserted,” he said.
“Where’s Harper?”
“Hey guys,” Harper said. “Come take a look at this.” His voice was shrill and excited over the com.
We moved quickly and found him bent over something on the ground.
“Look,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Remains of a campfire?”
There was a pile of charred wood on the ground in front of him. The wind was kicking up gray ash.
“What would anybody need a campfire for? Surface temp is nine hundred fucking degrees.”
“Wait a minute…”
Perkins said, “It’s still smoldering.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Jesus Christ,” Hayes said. “There’s thermal activity everywhere. It’s a goddamn trap! Get the hell out of –”
Hayes’s frantic voice echoed in my helmet. I glanced up in time to see Perkins knocked off his feet and thrown back as he was pinned against one of the skeletal dump trucks. Harper grunted and then disappeared.
As soon as I got to my feet something struck me in the chest with enough force to knock the wind out of me and I was being hurled backward into the dump truck next to Perkins. I was pinned against it. Wire mesh dug into my suit and the reinforced plastic of my helmet’s faceplate. It was like being trapped in a spider web. Some kind of net that tightened painfully even as I struggled to break free. Metal barbs at the end of the net dug themselves into the boney armor of the dump truck, securing it in place.
“Perkins do you copy? Perkins?”
Hayes’s voice was deafening in my helmet, but it came through broken and garbled. Something was jamming our coms.
I worked against my restraints.
“Don’t bother,” Perkins said. “There’s no use.”
I didn’t know how he could sound so calm and collected under the circumstances. But I obeyed. I stopped writhing and let my body go still.
Perkins said, “Harper, do you copy?”
There was a garbled response, but it was distinctly Harper’s voice.
“Davidson?”
Another squawk and then the com went silent.
My stun baton was sheathed uselessly at my side, hopelessly out of reach.
I saw figures moving toward us, just out of reach of our suit lights.
Strange chittering noises filled
the silence.
Click-click-click-clack-clack-click.
The buzz of static in my helmet. Followed by Harper’s voice: Oh…my...God! They’re insects! Giant bugs!”
The figures approached us, moving within range of our suit lights. Suddenly, I knew what Harper had been screaming about.
They skittered toward us. A dozen of them.
They had four legs, and two larger raptorial forelegs that rose up and scissored back down, the underside decorated by a series of serrated spikes.
Their heads were triangular. Their segmented legs clacked over the rocky terrain, long torsos that arched upward, giving the impression that they walked upright.
From my position pinned against the dump truck, I couldn’t be sure of their size, but I guessed the shortest of them was at least seven feet tall.
They were shrouded in thick, plated armor. Two furiously moving mandibles surrounded mouths filled with sharp fangs. Their heads were helmeted as well, but when they were close enough I saw they had two large compound eyes, with another, smaller set below those.
They glared at us without emotion. Their eyes reflected the light from our suits.
Click-click-clack-click-clack, they chattered as their mandibles moved, opened and closed, and I realized it was a form of speech. The language made no sense to me, nothing more than a series of quick clicks and clacks that bore no resemblance to human words.
They’re insects, I thought. Giant mantises.
It made a weird kind of sense. All I could think was that Harper had been right.
Though the insects on Earth were relatively small, they were remarkably resilient. Despite short life spans, they multiplied quickly and some of them worked in highly organized groups. I wondered if these aliens functioned similarly. Were they warrior drones sent out from a nest by a queen?
As they moved toward us, I could tell that only four of their legs were used specifically for walking. The two front legs functioned like human arms.
In school we had learned that if a nuclear holocaust were to occur, insects might have been one of the only types of life to survive. In that case, we had been talking specifically about the cockroach. Our instructor (I forget what his name was) had said that the creatures were one of the most prolific on the planet. Once they infested an area, it was nearly impossible to eradicate them. They invaded, multiplied, and conquered.
Project Diamond (Jacob Lansing Series Book 1) Page 13