Cold and Dark

by Marc Neuffer

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  I was team lead on this mission. I’d earned my spot; hard work, study and twenty-three ops on as many worlds. I was no longer Daughter of Hornblower. And much to Mom’s pleased surprise, six years ago, I’d found a guy who wasn’t afraid of Dad’s reputation. Although, at times, he did keep his distance from Mom.

  Opening a small hatch, situated at the edge of a large one, was a simple matter of rotating a small lever, which broke immediately. That breakage exposed the guts of the engagement hub. Drawing a counter-rotating tool from its holster, I inserted the blade between two wedges I’d jammed into the hollow-cored lock shaft. Torque, more torque, a bit more, there, shaft rotation achieved. The locking mechanism was no longer a lock. Once an engineer, always an engineer. Mom says the same thing about being a Marine.

  As team lead, I’d claimed the right to first entry. The round hatch popped out a half-meter. Nudging it, the entire disc rotated on an off-center shaft. I move it away from the opening. Pitch black inside, as we’d expected.

  Our job was to make this ship safe for the science and engineering crews to follow. We would slay all the ice-dragons to free the sleeping princess. That’s what my friend and team mate, the diminutive Sweq, called this mission. She/he was right behind me.

  Our lights revealed a ten-meter long tunnel; circular bulkheads, no discernable deck. No up or down, a mate, to the outer door, was at the end.

  The differential pressure across the barrier ahead was almost nonexistent. Though, considering the huge volume on the other side, it would take months to equalize, through this opening. My team was installing a flexible and transparent airlock to take the place of the ship’s outer door.

  On first entry, we’d seen frost over every surface. That coating had quickly sublimated in the full vacuum. The airlock, on opening, had purged the slight atmospheric pressure inside.

  Sweq scanned the inner door, which turned out to be an intermediate one; a triple airlock. Same opening procedure, this time, after a bit of heating, no broken levers. There were some obvious looking control and indicator panels, but, like the rest of the ship, they were stone-cold dead. I touched the transparent covering of one, only to see it crumble into flakey bits, floating around us.

  On this first visit, we would establish a safe passage to the center sphere. The egg-heads were betting that sections of it could be made habitable as a base for further examinations and exploration of this ghost ship. Possibly, a years-long investigation, if anything interesting turned up. Different science disciplines had different definitions of the word interesting.

  I was hoping we weren’t the burial detail for the long dead inhabitants.

  Four of my team mates and I had floated through the last door. We hadn’t shut the ones behind us. Our temporary airlock served as the plug. Two of my crew were now moving our ship, Georgia, to dock with the lock and then secure us to the hull with quick-release grapples.

  Long ago, Dad had established the precedent of having the sentient AIs, embedded in Ranger-cloned ships, choose their own names.

  After docking, the outside crew would pass through supplies and inflatable hab-modules for our base camp in the inner hull structure, well below the dirt layers, thirty-four kilometers inward.

  We’d brought large power-drones to light the pitch black. They attached to the walls providing light, three klicks down every radiating passageway. Other mini-drones were released to survey the empty channels that ran beneath the inner surface.

  Since there was no gravity to speak of, we anchored pinion posts and web lines to the bulkheads. Working in zero-g was slow going. Eventually, grav-pads would be installed in places, but we considered that to be a time waster right now. We didn’t plan to stay in one location on this visit.

  The sphere-ship must have had artificial gravity at one time. A system that held on until the ground, water and atmosphere had frozen, otherwise, once ‘top-side’, we would be pushing through clumps of floating rock, ice and dirt as we explored.

  If rotation had provided simulated gravity, over time, all the loose material and gases would have slid along the inner curve, collecting at the interior equator.

  When Carl and Dela-Fray joined us, we released several flocks of mini-drones up a ventilation ‘chimney’ to do a gross-survey of the interior. As pathfinders, our job was to get to the center sphere. But today we setup our first camp to get comfortable while we absorbed the drone data.

  33 Interment

  Interment: to place inside; burial of the deceased.

  ✽✽✽

  As we started getting scans from the corridor drones, it became apparent that there had been both orderly withdrawal and closing up of sections, as well as chaotic desertion and sporadic re-population in some areas. Whatever happened here was not an instantaneous disaster. The survey drones had only covered about ten percent of the accessible areas of the underground.

  Our plan for today was to find, and make safe, a usable passage to the interior surface, preferably one that was close by, and wide enough for our power sleds.

  We left our hab units and much of our supply dump where we had spent the previous day and night. Our sleds had triplicates onboard.

  The three sleds were five, linked and articulated, sections of about two meters, which allowed them to make tight corners. They were modified, low-profile utility tunnel inspection units used in cities; each one had a seating cockpit for two people. Auto controls kept them on track, preventing impacts against walls. We snaked our way to an inward passage. Up (or down) we went, dropping off drones to light the way. Light helped to limit the feeling that we were entering the belly of the beast.

  After three hours we were at the last door. The door to dirt-side. Having data from drones, we’d sent through the ventilation chimney yesterday, we had a good idea what to expect; a frozen wasteland with decayed buildings.

  Our exit point had been a large structure, now fallen in. Another indication that the environmental systems had continued after the fall; that’s what we were calling the period of time from robust occupation to the eventual, and probably slow, die-off of the critters who had once crewed this vessel.

  I was sure that there had been more than just crew, this ship had probably been a generational ship, slowly making its way, generation after generation, into the cold dark, perhaps seeking a safe harbor.

  We had to cut through the last door. It sat perpendicular to the floor level of this ruin.

  Remaining tethered to the sleds, we extricated ourselves to stretch out before moving on. We were going to establish a new base camp at the land-side of the nearest shaft that connected to the center sphere; our mission target. We’d sent drones up there, but found no obvious entrance points on the exterior.

  The sphere was studded with crystal hemispheres. Those had been used to focus light into this vast interior; an artificial sun, though a cool one. Heat must have been provided by systems in the inner hull, as was air and water circulation. I wondered if they had a day and night cycle or kept the lights on full time.

  We made a full circuit around the shaft, locating three possible entry points. Two had building debris piled up against them. We landed next to the clearest.

  Prior to entering the ship, we reviewed the hull sample data. There was an inordinate amount of cosmic pitting. Surely, the originating species had some sort of working radiation and deflector shield at some point. Dating the hull, by the amount of pitting and interstitial defects in the crystalline samples, indicated an age of one point seven billion years. Left alone, the outermost layer of the hull would have turned to dust after another few million years of cosmic particle impacts. We had no idea how old the ship had been before its shield had stopped functioning.

  In any case, the builder race had to have been just below the threshold sentient level, at the time of the last Big Wipe. Just below, and ready to spring up rapidly, to have achieved this level of technical prowess in such a short evolutionary time scale.

  Well
, perhaps not too high a technological level. Either they had missed their target, or the ship systems had started to fall into disrepair faster than they had expected. In any case, for some reason, they had devolved socially, forgetting how to fix their world-ship. I can envision the last thousand generations, forgetting what had come before their interment here, or even the purpose of the ship. Maybe not knowing it was even a ship.

  Clearing away debris in zero-g was both easy and hard. Moving something still requires force to get a mass at rest moving. Once moving, another force is required to stop it.

  Rule number one: don’t get between a moving mass and an immovable object. Mass, times speed, equals get squished.

  The door was finally cleared, but we were fatigued. Time for dinner and sleep. It may have been over-caution on my part, but I stationed security bots on our perimeter. After working all day, in what felt like an oppressive cavern, with only local lighting, the hab interior, with gave-pads, felt cozy.

  After dinner, we stayed up to shoot the breeze, having a round-robin contest to see who could come up with the most outlandish thing we would find in the center sphere. Some were very ghoulish. Spawns of old campfire stories to scare the kids. Sweq didn’t see the humor in getting eaten alive over and over again, for eternity, by a toothy quantum-worm.

  As before, we left our camp established. Onward and upward, or inward, as the case may be. The door was easily forced. Inside, the tube was a collection of smaller ones. After a short investigation, we surmised that each one served different purposes. Some went both up to the sphere and down to the outer hull. Others led only up or only down. We had decided that, from anywhere, the center sphere was up. We took the largest one, going up; over five-hundred kilometers up.

  As we ascended, I let my mind wander. If an average human male fell, from the sphere to the bottom, in a one-g gravity field vacuum, it would take him about five and a half minutes to reach the bottom, five hundred kilometers below. The speed at impact would be over three thousand meters per second. If he didn’t bend his knees on impact, he might break a few bones as he pancaked.

  Anyway, the trip up was boring. No changes in scenery; over six hours of it. Even with the pedal to the metal, these sleds have a governor on their top speed.

  I had a laser range finder, on each sled, trained on the end of the shaft. Georgia, our ship’s AI was tracking our progress as well. At 83 kph, an abrupt stop would be a killer. The ‘Spherians’, as we started calling them, must have had an express lift somewhere, either that, or they were a very patient people.

  Along with our supplies and third hab unit, we carried sensor packs that fed directly back to Georgia. From the outside, even our best ship sensors couldn’t determine everything through such a thick hull and the kilometers of ice and dirt that lined the hull.

  We had twenty klicks to go when Georgia pinged me.

  “I’m detecting sporadic power usage from the sphere.”

  That woke everybody up, from their individual daydreams.

  “What sort of power usage?”

  “I’m not sure, you are just at the edge of your detector range. I’ll keep you informed as you get closer.”

  I slowed our approach. At fifteen klicks, hearing nothing, I asked for a status update.

  “Any changes or better information?”

  “No, still a low level, anomalous reading. It’s very low power. But the readings are steady now.”

  Carl piped up, “Hey, Sweq. It’s your quantum worm.”

  “Not mine. It’s Dela-Fray’s. His race eats them you know.”

  Sweq must be getting nervous. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard her/him give a rejoinder back to someone.

  I paused our approach two klicks from the upper hatch. Our coms and sensors were also being monitored by a tech team onboard Avalon. I wondered why they hadn’t piped up. Had Georgia been censoring our feed to them?

  “Hey Avalon! Wake up! What are you seeing?”

  Seconds later I heard a muffled, “Yeah, umm ... yeah. Well let me see. There’s a small power source ahead. I’m having the readings analyzed right now. I’ll get back to you.”

  Son-of-a-bitch! It was the night shift on watch over there, the guy had been dozing off.

  “Get me the team lead over there. And if you need a nap, get a relief monitor.”

  “Well ...okay ... I’ll have to wake her.”

  “Just do it!” I switched over to team-only coms. “Alright team, were going to hold here for a bit. I don’t like the information we’re getting, or lack of it. If something’s at low power, we could wake up something else by our arrival.” All sorts of scenarios spun through my head.

  “Carl, send an attachment drone up there to the hatch ... and give me the feed.”

  “On its way”

  We waited.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Sweq and I nosed up to the hatch. The other sleds had backed off ten klicks. Sweq tapped my shoulder and pointed at a small panel at the side of the ten-meter-wide hatch. There was a faint, flickering, amber indicating light; on for less than a second then off for eight. I moved the drone next to the panel.

  The team lead on Avalon had rousted the day shift monitors and primary team members. I’d been having a running conversation with her since we had stopped two kilometers back.

  “Think I should just ring the doorbell?”

  “Well ... the scans don’t show anything physical, powered up or dead, that could be used to monitor the tube from the other side. The only penetrations, in the bulkhead, are wires to that panel. The crystal caps on the other two indicators are blue and clear. The clear one, when lit, is probably white.”

  “So ... knock or ring?”

  “Um ... I suggest a faint knock first ... perhaps a few gentle taps to see if you get a response.”

  I motioned Sweq to hand me a tool. Her video feed was being sent to Avalon, just as everyone else’s was. I gave the two-finger ‘eyes on me’ signal. Sweq nodded.

  The tool was a prybar. I swung at the hatch, hard. Bang! Two more times. Bang! Bang! That should do it. Unless it was the night watch in there too. The sound had transmitted through my suit to my Q-com.

  After my last swing, I heard some muffled conversations from Avalon’s end. The last bit was ... “Well, she’s there and you’re not, so hush.”

  “Sarah ... let’s not be in too big a hurry now.”

  “Any changes in power readings?” I asked.

  Georgia gave a quick “No changes.”

  “Okay ... we didn’t wake the dead, and there’s no living here to answer.” I reached over, pressing the only button on the panel. It moved, it clicked, it crumbled. The hatch moved.

  “Sarah, power surge, probably the hatch motor.” Georgia was faster than the team on Avalon. They remained silent.

  When the hatch was three-quarters open, it stalled.

  Georgia again, “Power levels have dropped to pre-opening levels.” Motor burnout.

  I lifted the sled up through the opening, lighting bots led the way. My eyes were level with the deck. Everything clean, no sign of abrupt, or violent abandonment.

  We went in further, the sled rising like a snake from its hole. We pulled up all the way through the hatch, then flattened out the sled, parallel to the deck, anchoring it. A large room, several open passages to other areas. I released a survey-drone pack.

  “Alright, everybody up, let’s recon this place. Make it safe for the civilians.”

  34 Inauspicious

  Inauspicious: contrary to interest or welfare; adverse circumstances; unfavorable. Presaging ill fortune.

  ✽✽✽

  Mechanicals. Everywhere we looked, wires, pipes, and mechanicals. No superconductors, no AI shells, no replicators or automatic fabricators. Not even the remains of holographic computers or projectors. Very little hyper-miniaturization. Wire ribbons connected control modules to each other. The soft insulators had decayed and flaked off as dust, millions of years ago. No evidence of quantum
science. And no bodies.

  Dust samples in the relatively clean environment, of the sphere, indicated organic material, almost completely degraded to its elemental state. After decay, long after any remaining air currents had stilled, everything had frozen to its current, static condition. It looks like the shields and gravity had been the last to go. Every system dead, except for what was straining to sip on some remaining power reserve.

  The amber light we’d seen, by the access hatch, had failed before the remainder of my team made it to that location. It must have been activated when we breached the lower door at ground level. A last gasp, as that system had tried to fulfil its mindless purpose.

  Up here, we could use our suit’s sticky-feet to stay oriented with the up and down of the architecture, like we had in the passages below ground level. Sticky-feet don’t work in dirt or snow. Our gloves had the same, controllable, properties. There were patches of frost on some surfaces, but not enough to hamper our investigations.

  The science teams wanted us to go ten different directions at once. I had to remind them, repeatedly, that we were recon, not a science team.

  Starting in what looked to be a lobby area, we affixed small sensors to the deck, overhead, and bulkheads to monitor structural integrity. Before laying gravity mats, we wanted to make sure the place wouldn’t fall in on itself.

  This place had been cleaned out before being abandoned. Nothing loose in sight; everything was bolted or welded in place. We followed the drone track to the power-usage location. It led us to a control station of sorts. Five separate work-stations were embedded in the far bulkhead. In front of high, desk-like control panels, were what looked like s-shaped furniture; chairs, welded to the deck. Only the metal frames remained.

  There were six slots along the sides of each chair. Perhaps hand and footholds or points for affixing, now missing, body harnesses. We didn’t know which. No arm rests or controls in the frames. Leave it to the science crews to determine the xeno-morphology of the gone-to-dust inhabitants. Whoever or whatever they had been, their bodies had been more than twice as large as humans.