9 FOSTER
Meanwhile . . .
SA-115, Sirius A system
May 19, 2050, 10:47 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Captain Rebecca Foster’s body tumbled like a ball rolling down a hill before she came to a stop in the middle of a grassy meadow. She quickly got up and saw the oval-shaped portal Master Chief Chevallier tossed her and Pierce through. The portal hovered in the air above the hill Foster had rolled farther down, and the strange tomb-like structure they escaped from could still be seen on the inside of the oval portal.
Well that explains the fall, she thought as Pierce got to his feet. Chevallier leaped through the oval afterward followed by McDowell and Kingston. Seconds later the portal vanished but the oval-shaped device remained floating high above. Foster walked curiously toward it, scanning it with her EAD, its composition, power source, weight, estimated age all came back ‘unknown.’
McDowell groaned as he got to his feet. “What the hell was that?”
“No idea, sir,” Chevallier said to him.
“I mean that stunt MC.” McDowell stood face-to-face with Chevallier. He angled his index finger at her face in a condescending manner. Foster didn’t need him to remove his Hammerhead helmet to know he was pissed. “I’m in command here!”
“Sorry, sir, felt like it was the best course of action.”
Foster stepped in between the two and used her body as a wedge to force the two to step back from each other. “Commander, are you seriously gonna grill her for savin’ our hides back there?”
McDowell tapped an arm mounted computer terminal on his suit. A small hologram appeared above it relaying the sensor logs of his suit. “We had backup coming; our shipboard psionic was on the way.”
Chevallier waved him off. “Should have spoken up then.”
“That the attitude you give all your Cos, MC?” McDowell said.
“You read my file, you should know, sir.”
“OK, enough already!” Foster felt the need to interrupt.
McDowell faced Foster, and she managed to get a glimpse of his angry and flustered facial expression through his helmet’s visor. “Enough? She fucked us! We’re lost with no way back to the ship. Our supplies were left on the transport, not that we brought a lot to start with, and there’s hostile aliens that want to kill us.” McDowell pointed to the grassy meadows before them. “Like, fuck man, where the hell are we?”
“We’re still in Sirius,” Pierce said as he scanned the area with his EAD.
“Ah, the egghead will get us out of this,” McDowell said.
“We can get out of the suits,” Pierce said, taking his helmet off. “Breathable oxygen nitrogen atmosphere.”
Pierce was right. Foster checked her EAD and saw comfortable temperatures of twenty-four degrees Celsius and safe air, free of toxins and radiation. She removed her helmet along with everyone else and looked at the area around them with her own eyes. She had to squint for a while, the light that was beaming down from the sun above was intense.
“This is strange, however,” Pierce said keeping his eyes on the holographic results of his EAD. He looked up to the clear azure skies and aimed his EAD in the direction of the enormous sun while his free hand shielded his eyes from the intense white light. “We’re not on the same planet we landed on, that’s Sirius A in the sky.”
“How did we travel between those two planets just like that?” Foster said.
Pierce pointed at the oval device still hanging in the air. “That device, it must be a wormhole.”
“A what?” Chevallier said.
Pierce explained. “Theoretically speaking, you could bend the fabric of space time and join two places together and create a gateway, a portal if you will, between two locations. I think we just traveled through one.”
Chevallier cursed in French while everyone’s eyes returned to the dormant wormhole.
“Any idea how to get it up and runnin’ again?” Foster said.
“You want to go back to that?” Kingston said to her.
“We should be able to contact the Carl Sagan,” Pierce said. “The distances between Sirius A and B is equal to the distances between the sun and Uranus give or take a few AU depending on their orbit. We could send a message to them, but it will take a few hours for them to receive it.”
“That’s assuming we can get our comms workin’,” Foster said as she eyed the ‘connection lost’ notification on her EAD. “We’re still being jammed.”
“There’s a barrier around us, it might be blocking our signals,” Pierce said.
Foster linked her EAD with Pierce’s to view all the data he discovered. The projection that appeared on her EAD showed that the region they were in was protected by a dome shaped energy shield.
“Shaped like a dome, so there’s probably a wall someplace,” Foster said. “Maybe we could slip past it to get a signal out.” Following the data displayed to her she began to lead the way across the fresh green grass below them. “I reckon the closest wall is this way, let’s move it folks.”
The five spent hours drifting across the flat meadows, ankle high grass slithering across their boots. There were no winds that blew past them which was understandable as the dome probably prevented strong winds from developing. The pleasant and flat landscape of the meadows had taken them into a rocky and mountainous one where hills dominated, and valleys carved their way through the region. Foster hoped they were heading in the right direction. All it would take was a cliff to block their path and force them to make a detour. Had the Carl Sagan been in orbit and the barrier not blocking their signals, they would have been able to link up with scans from orbit and get a better idea of what was around them.
McDowell and Kingston chatted among themselves the whole time, mostly soldier banter, women they bedded, parties they went to during their younger days. Chevallier kept quiet, much like Foster and Pierce. Foster wondered what would become of Chevallier after they got back to the Carl Sagan now that her mother and UNE navy PR wasn’t here to protect her.
“So, any thoughts, Pierce?” Foster said to him, breaking their multi-hour silence.
“Hmm, too many mysteries about this system. Plant life? An ecosystem? Not enough time has passed since the creation of this system to allow for any of this.” His hand gestures reminded everyone of the bright sun twice the size of the one around Earth above. “Then we got Sirius A, we’re too close to it.”
“Was wondering about that myself.”
“Given what we know about the size and power of a star like this, I was able to extrapolate our estimated distance to it. Simply put, if Sirius A is that big in the skies we should be about one AU way from it.”
Foster winced at what he said. One AU was the distance between Earth and the sun. The habitable zone for Sirius A was five AU due to the intensity of the star. Yet there was an Earthlike planet around them, unaffected by the giver of light above.
“We should be dead if that’s the case,” Foster said.
“Heat and radiation should have killed us long ago, and even if it didn’t the light alone would have blinded us.”
“Then why are we alive?” Chevallier asked from behind.
Foster motioned to the rippling effects of the barriers that surrounded them. “Those barriers, someone built them to make life possible here.”
Pierce nodded in agreement. “Makes sense, though it still doesn’t explain how plants were able to evolve.” He swatted away an insect that resembled a fly with four wings away from his face. “And bugs.”
Foster wiped away a torrent of sweat from her forehead. The barrier, as strong as it was, didn’t filter out everything Sirius A was dishing out to them. Her EAD reported a 10 degree jump in the air temperature as the light grew stronger. They were amid the sun rising to midday, just at a slower rate to that of Sol on Earth, meaning longer day and night cycles.
She had everyone sit down and take a break under the shade of a nearby tree. Pierce passed on the offer and ran off like a kid in a
candy store, to scan the plant and insect life around them. Critical situation or not, they were still the first explorers from Earth to make it this far.
“So, hostile aliens on one planet with weapons strong enough to take down our shields, and now this,” Chevallier said to Foster. “Something tells me we might want to rethink our plans to colonize this system.”
“Someone beat us to it,” said Kingston.
Foster fanned her face with her hands, the cool air coming from her EVA suit wasn’t enough. “That thought crossed my mind, but we still don’t know enough about this system to make a call. EVE even said there’s a chance this is all undiscovered Lyonria stuff. If that’s the case we ain’t got nothing to worry about, the Lyonria are long dead.”
“Oh my god,” Pierce called out.
Foster saw Pierce drop to his knees next to the ledge of a valley they were approaching. They sprinted over to him wondering what had him fired up. Foster arrived first and looked down into the valley below them. She saw large animals with massive necks, taller than giraffes travelling in packs. They fed on the plants that overhung on the ledges around them as the valley below lacked any vegetation. Tiny rodents that looked like a cross between a squirrel and bat ran away as the mouths of the long-necked animals came in to feed themselves on the hanging plants.
Foster looked at Pierce’s emotional face. He couldn’t take his eyes off the life before them, life that shouldn’t exist but did. After a long delay he began to speak to Foster. “This is—”
“Yeah, yeah not possible.”
“This changes everything we know about how fast life could evolve on a planet.”
Pierce was right, not only had the planets in the system had not enough time, but the barriers around them no doubt took some time to design, build and activate. They were probably set up years after the planet was created, thus shortening the window for evolution as there was a period were the planet’s surface was being bombarded with heat and radiation.
Foster lost track of how many hours had passed as the five ventured onward. They crossed a natural footbridge across the valley and later entered a forest, heavily populated by creatures with long rubbery arms, six of them they counted. The animals used the long reach of two of their arms to climb up the trunks of trees, while the remaining four held on tight to what appeared to be their children. They swung from branch to branch looking for food Foster figured.
Foster led everyone to a small river, something they were in dire need of as their supplies of water ran low. She analyzed the makeup of the water below them with her EAD, it reported no signs of toxins, radiation, or bacteria. It was pure water.
Break number two commenced as they cupped their hands together and brought up some of the cold, refreshing water to drink. Kingston sat down and began to unwrap and eat one of his protein bars.
Chevallier looked at him and grimaced. “So, what are we going to do when our protein bars run out?”
“Take up hunting,” Foster said pointing to Chevallier’s rifle.
“You really think we’re going to be stranded here?” Pierce asked.
“If we can’t get our comms working, then probably,” McDowell said.
“The Carl Sagan will have continued the mission regardless,” Foster said. “They’ll probably swing by this planet to study it eventually and hopefully find us.”
Chevallier chuckled. “Assuming the aliens didn’t kill them.”
“Must you be so negative?” Foster said to her.
“Just keeping it real.”
They heard movement in the nearby bushes. Everyone stood, on edge, three rifles and two pistols powered on. Foster and Peirce used their EAD to scan about, while the three Hammerhead commandos moved forward taking point.
McDowell checked his motion sensors and whispered. “I got movement.”
“So do we,” Foster said eying her EAD’s projection.
McDowell waved his hand around using military hand signals to communicate to Chevallier and Kingston to surround the bush before him. He began to count down with his fingers for them to act.
Three.
Two.
One.
They charged forward, and two people sprung out of the bushes screaming and yelling in fear, one was clearly female while the other was male. They each wore a burgundy robe and hood that wrapped around their face, leaving only their nose and mouth visible. A black and gold visor covered where their eyes were expected to be, while gold colored chains dangled from their necks and wrists.
The three rifle-wielding Hammerheads kept their weapons aimed at them and began to shout and demand to know who they where and why they were there. Irrelevant questions as far as Foster was concerned. For starters they clearly didn’t speak English, secondly this was their planet. Foster and company were the alien visitors, aliens that now jammed their weapons at the locals.
“Stand down, I don’t think they’re hostile,” Foster said to McDowell.
“After what we went through I’m not taking any chances!”
Foster took another glance at the frightened people before them. “They look human.”
Pierce moved closer to them with his EAD, and they leaped backward, yelping and trembling in fear. Foster put her pistol and EAD away and approached them slowly with her hands forward for them to see she was unarmed and meant no harm. “Hey now, it’s just a scan, he ain’t gonna bite ya.”
They weren’t buying it.
Foster pulled out one of her protein bars and removed its silver-colored wrapping. She displayed it to them, broke a piece off and ate it. They watched her consume it as she broke off another piece and then offered it to them. The male hooded local slowly reached out to grab a piece of her bar, his hands trembling in the process. He ate it and his tone of voice changed as he spoke to his traveling companion. Foster offered the rest of the bar to the two, which they took and devoured.
They must have been starving, she thought.
Foster tried to communicate her name to them in the classic sense of pointing toward herself and slowly saying her name. “Rebecca.” She pointed at Pierce. “Travis.” The two robed figures looked puzzled and unsure of how to respond to Foster’s attempt at first contact. “Rebecca. Travis,” she said again. Her index finger moved toward the rest. “Sylvester. Mathilda.” She stopped at Kingston grimacing. “Sorry, I never did get your name,” she said to him.
Kingston rolled his eyes. “I’m feeling the love, Captain.”
They responded slowly, mimicking Foster’s actions. “Eisila,” the female said, pointing to herself.
The male stepped forward, pointing to himself. “Mavron.”
“Eisila and Mavron, nice to meet you.”
Mavron began to walk away after bowing respectfully toward them. Eisila stopped and looked at Foster and the rest, no doubt debating her next actions. She called out to Mavron and exchanged several words back and forth in their language, then faced Foster and her team once again and gestured with rapid hand movement for them to follow.
“I guess they want us to follow,” Foster said to the group.
“Is this part of first contact protocol?” Chevallier asked.
Foster laughed. “We done tossed that book in the garbage with what happen at Sirius B. This is about survival, and the locals could help us out in that department.”
LOCAL CITY
SA-115, Sirius A system
May 19, 2050, 22:29 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Foster looked at the time reported on her EAD, then looked up at the skies as the star of Sirius still shined brightly. Yep, long ass days here.
Mavron and Eisila led the five out of the forest and into a city. The buildings within the city were made of stone and wood. Wood burning ovens cooked their meals, rope bridges connected some of the larger buildings together, while armored people wearing chain armor that reflected white light from above patrolled, armed with primitive looking bows and arrows.
Much like their guides, all the inhabitants of the c
ity looked like humans and wore hoods and robes with a similar design. Everyone that was outdoor had their eyes covered, Foster figured it was due to the bright light from the sun. They all spoke a strange language and stared in awe as the five humans donning EVA suits or combat armor walked the streets.
Three armored patrolling figures approached Mavron and Eisila and pulled them aside, leaving the five humans to explore the city themselves. Foster looked back and winced as Mavron and Eisila exchanged heated words with the armored guards and hoped that their presence didn’t get Mavron and Eisila in major trouble.
“Thoughts everyone?” Foster asked.
“They look human, or perhaps Linl?” Pierce said.
“I wanna say Linl; they were buildin’ ships before they joined Radiance. Maybe this is a forgotten colony?”
“Can’t you just scan them?” Chevallier said.
“These aren’t medical scanners, the only data we’re getting back is what’s on the outside,” Pierce said.
They arrived at what appeared to be a marketplace. Merchants yelled, trying to attract the attention of curious shoppers down toward their carts full of logs, hides, vegetables, and tools. Foster felt as though they had travelled back in time to an ancient Earth city as they moved their way deeper into the market. One particular merchant took interest in the five, as the five took equal interest in him for he wasn’t of the same species as the residents of the city.
The merchant in question was short, around five feet in height. He had two ratlike tails that grew out from the top of his upper back, its skin was beige and furry, while a thin mane of hair encircled his head like a lion. The creature’s head looked up at them with intrigue, it began to speak to them in a squeaky voice, and like the rest of the locals around them Foster didn’t understand a word it spoke.
The Siege of Sirius: A Splintered Galaxy Space Fantasy Novel Page 10