Alex squeezed his eyes shut, knees locked and hips jammed against the backrest. He gripped the control sticks so hard his knuckles were white and adrenaline shot through him in preparation for an impact.
Nothing happened. There was no catastrophic impact. The ring was a kilometer across, and the Kshlav’o only a hundred meters long. There was ample space for it to pass harmlessly around the ship. It apparently hadn’t tried to kill them, either. There might have been a little jolt, but he wasn’t sure. That could have just been from Carbon’s arms around his neck tightening from firm embrace to death grip.
Alex choked out a noise as his eyes rolled towards her. With her cheek firmly pressed to his head, all he could see was the dark tip of her nose, so close that it wouldn’t come into focus. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, rapid and constricted. Carbon didn’t seem to be inclined to let go of him just yet and she was still really damn strong.
He tried again, this strangled sound a little more panicked as his fingers refused to heed his command to release the controls. It seemed to take forever, arms starting to shake from the adrenaline before his fingers finally unwound and he tugged on the limbs encircling his neck. Carbon gave a start and quickly let go, standing back up behind him.
Her hands smoothed his hair, worry in her voice. “I am sorry, did I do you harm?”
Alex sucked in a breath of sweet air and shook his head with a weak laugh and a glance over his shoulder. “No, I’m fine. Just surp-” His eyes darted back to the screen. ”Whoa. We are not in Kansas anymore.”
The ship was inside. Alex flipped the view to the dorsal camera and they saw the ring - or one very much like it - was embedded at the apex of a massive dome, slowly receding as the ship was lowered. For a moment they could still clearly see the Thackeray’s Globule they had been in through the ring. Their view of the globule seemed to frost over and then disappeared like someone had just turned it off, leaving nothing but the apex of the dome just beyond the ring.
“Is that-” Carbon leaned against him in that distracting manner again. “Were we teleported?”
He leaned back against her and enjoyed the closeness. “Maybe, never been teleported before. Shoulda been more sparkles, I think. Wormhole?”
“No one has successfully stabilized a wormhole that large. Not for that long, either.”
“You remember that time anyone created teleportation technology before?”
He felt her nod. “You have a point.”
The scanners had the same problems detecting this ring as the one in the globule, once again ruling out interference. The dome itself, on the other hand, was conventional enough to work. It was a dense ceramic material infused with a variety of metals, just about twenty kilometers in diameter and less than half as high. This was ribbed with long ribbons of light stretching out from the center, leaving the entire floor well lit.
A half dozen walkways radiated from the center, one side stepped and the other smooth, running all the way to the edge of the dome. Channels carved out between them got progressively deeper as they widened. The Kshlav'o was heading towards one of the depressions, nice and slow. They were about to land.
Carbon started to pet him again, hands shaking gently. “I do not recognize this style of building.”
“Yeah, same here. Just to come out and say it, this isn’t a Human design.” Not by any modern design work he'd ever seen. Things tended towards simplicity right now, but it just didn't feel right.
“It does not bear any of the hallmarks of Tsla'o structures.” She agreed quickly.
“The presence of straight lines precludes the tkt.” The tkt were a hivemind, to an extent, though it appeared the highest levels of their hives had at some point nuked each other into oblivion, leaving the lower castes working on autopilot. Their ships were few and far between, and generally looked like noticeably large asteroids. “They’d never build something with this much empty space, either.”
“Agreed.” She’d stopped petting Alex, though kept a hand resting on his head in a gesture that felt oddly protective. “It also lacks any evidence of the biotech the Eohm favor.”
The ship rocked gently as it touched down, something it hadn’t been explicitly designed to do. The armor was specced high enough to safely support the weight and then some, but this did not make Alex feel any better about having an unknown force land his ship anywhere.
Alex checked the scanners again and his brow furrowed. “Local gravity is .97 gees. Atmosphere is 77 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and the usual trace elements. No biological, chemical agents, or radiation. Pressure is at 103 kilopascal and it is a chilly 10 Celsius. Looks like someone was expecting us.”
Carbon slipped her arms around his shoulders, chin tapping his head as she nodded. “It appears so. Can we leave?”
“I’m still locked out of navigation. Might be able to get a workaround in place...” His jaw worked as he thought about their options. “I don’t know. Do we even have the gear to do that?”
“Operating the primary thrusters manually will not be an issue. The maneuvering thrusters and gravity plates will be far more difficult to control.”
“That’s what I thought. Even if we could get up there, we don’t know how to turn that thing back on. There’s always this.” Alex brought up a live feed from the forward camera. A hundred meters away there was a single small building sitting in the center of the floor. Arches covered it, each pointing down one of the radial paths towards the outer wall of the dome. The one facing them was lit from within by a faint blue-green glow.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“The light feels familiar. I do not like that.”
“That is kind of creeping me out, too. It’s the only thing in here that might house some sort of... anything. The walls are smooth, the lights don’t even appear to have any sort of seam or gap.”
“I do not like any of this.”
“I’m not loving this either, but I think we should check it out. Not like we’re going anywhere else right now.”
Carbon straightened up behind him and grumbled. “No. We will- We will begin work circumventing the navigation system. I am reasonably sure we can use the primary thrusters to cut our way out, with modifications.”
Alex twisted around in the seat, eyebrows raised. “Are you serious? We don’t know how thick the walls are or what’s on the other side of them. We don’t even know where we are.”
She leveled a glare at him, eyes narrow and ears low. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Let’s just go take a look at the structure. There is not a single other damn thing out there. It’d be foolish to go through all that trouble if we could just go flip a switch.”
She started to reply, finger poised to make a point, and stopped, lips pursed. Then she started again, finger jutting forward a little more aggressively this time before she stopped once more. Carbon considered it for a few more seconds before she replied. “We will inspect the structure, nothing more. Then we will return to the ship. We should still wear protective equipment.”
“Sounds fine. I’d get cold anyway.” Alex slipped out of the chair and stretched before heading for the door.
She followed him out, stopping at her bunk as Alex continued up the passageway. She heaved a dramatic sigh. “I will meet you at the forward airlock shortly.”
He gave her a wave and what may have been a confidant smile. “See you there.”
Alex got a cool response, which didn’t surprise him considering the circumstances. That was fine. They would just go check out the light, hopefully find something that would help them out and then leave. Be back where they’re supposed to be in time for the pickup.
Once in the airlock, he stepped out of his deck shoes and began the process of slipping into a space suit. It was extremely good with hostile environments, but it still felt like overkill. It was the standard retina-searing white and trimmed with flexible armor patches covering the joints and various other soft spots you didn’t want holes in. The neural wreath embedded in the helmet came on and lit his vision up with a simple HUD, fully charged and green across the board.
He didn’t have to wait long. Carbon popped in and hit the inner door lock, at first glance wearing an encounter suit like she had when they’d first started working on board. Alex realized quickly that it wasn’t the same at all.
Carbon’s antenna were slicked back into interface sockets and the base layer was similar - a black, form fitting bodysuit, though this appeared to be a thicker material. The thin, flexible armor was likewise replaced by heavier rigid armor plates that were the same black as the base layer. The breastplate was ornately carved, the silver flowers and vines design flowing onto the pauldrons and repeated on the armor of her boots.
It looked like combat armor, really. The gentle bulges above each major joint indicated a strength booster. Layers of shield emitters pulsed gently around the armor, providing further protection, the innermost was airtight and covering just her head in lieu of a helmet.
The pistol and sword at her hip were really what sealed it. There were ways to render every sort of man-portable weapon useless, from plasma burners to good old fashioned bullets. A good quality sword would ruin just about anyone’s day and there wasn’t much they could do to stop it, short of adding more armor. There was also a bit of an intimidation factor.
Alex was most surprised at how feminine a shape she managed to retain. The comm light went yellow and green a moment later as the connection formed. At this range, the audio was crystal clear. “Where did you get that?”
“It was a gift for the journey.” Like that was supposed to sufficiently explain why she had combat armor. She looked him over and shuddered when her gaze lingered on his helmet. “I do not understand your willingness to put your head in a container.”
“Yeah, well. My going away gift was a box of plastic bricks.” He shrugged at the jab about his helmet. “It works. You’re on point.”
She stepped past him and keyed the outer door. It opened almost immediately, the walkway a tall step down. Carbon went out, Alex following a moment later. He glanced at the Kshlav’o, the gleaming silver of the outer armor mostly intact from this angle, only broken up by sensor equipment and the occasional blister for debris lasers.
The dome felt larger and even more empty in person. The walkway, now more clearly a pier of sorts, was light gray, edged with a dull gold color, every surface Alex could see textured with tiny whorls and vortices. They walked to the building in silence, apprehension and curiosity building in him with each step.
Carbon stopped at the edge of the arch, taking cover from whatever was within, and waved at him to fall in behind her.
“It’s clear.” He shrugged, the movement muted through his suit, and stood before the archway, close enough now to clearly make out the source of the light - a second arch within, lit up like day. “There was like a hundred meters where we had no cover at all.”
Carbon gave him an exasperated sigh as they stepped into the building, a large antechamber for the inner arch. Alex’s eyes adjusted to the dark interior despite the brightness of the inner archway. The scene on the other side was obscured by what appeared to be frosted glass, it looked like tall green grass and blue sky lay just beyond.
Alex walked up to the arch and touched the frosted surface, slick beneath his gloves before Carbon pulled his arm back with a very negative sound. A series of glyphs pulsed to life around the edges, four matching symbols on each side and a strange pattern of hash marks below them, one set blue and the other red. They all dimmed with the exception of a single blue glyph. It was bright, sharp, and felt violent.
“Hey, let me see the sword?”
Carbon had reached the same conclusion, the blade halfway out of its scabbard by the time he’d finished asking. The moment the handle rested in his glove, the same sharp glyph lit up on the red side. When he handed it back, it went away.
“No weapons?”
“That is what I’m thinking. This looks like the first... er, portal we went through. The way it’s frosted over.”
“The Kshlav’o has no weapons.”
“But one of us does.”
Carbon’s curiosity was piqued by this. She unclipped the sword and pistol, laying them on the ground at her feet. The glyph faded from ‘her’ side and the frost melted, leaving the archway clear.
The other side may well have been a park. Long grass waved in the bright noonday sun below a cloudless pale blue sky. Alex reached out and his fingers passed through where the frost used to be. He looked over his shoulder at Carbon with a grin. “What do you think? Should we check it out?”