High on the shoulder of an alien mountain, Owen Shelden trudged up a steep slope as pain and exhaustion piled on his soul like the snowflakes on his jacket. But neither the harsh weather, nor his burning muscles, nor even his doubts about the expedition would convince him to turn back. It wasn’t in his nature.

A life in the colonies had taught him it took more than courage to survive on other planets. Either dangerous weather, disease, or the invisible horror of radiation from an unprotected sky could destroy generations of work. Only a fierce, collective desire to keep going could prevent a colony from collapsing, and tens of thousands from dying.

From his fellow pioneers on the young world of Caldera, Owen had learned to expect trust and loyalty.

But on this climb, he could expect none. The off-worlders who had hired him as a guide wouldn’t even tell him what they were looking for, hidden among peaks never disturbed by humanity.

Thousands of feet below the snow blanketed slope lay a glacial valley, a corridor that channeled the wind for miles until it accelerated to shrieking speeds. Cold air bit through Owen’s Crylar weave jacket, and the polar fleece below. It bit through his skin and into his aching muscles. Soon, it would begin gnawing on his bones.

A turbulent gust kicked icy powder into his face, and he raised an arm for protection. It was an automatic gesture; his face was already numb, his beard crusty with snow. Ahead on the trail, he caught sight of the dark figure of the expedition’s leader—Rayker. She was waiting for him, as still against the blizzard as the rocks around them.

The cold bit deeper. Owen had been climbing for thirty years, but somehow this Earther was leaving him in her tracks. Even from the beginning, her strength and stamina had seemed unnatural.

He lowered his head, summoned a fresh burst of willpower, and pushed himself forward.

She waited where the ridge split, her arms folded, and a contemptuous expression on her gaunt face. Owen stopped beside her and cast a glance backward while he tried to catch his breath.

Behind them, the dozen other members of Rayker’s team were still snaking their way up the mountain’s treacherous ledges. Their heavy steps showed the toll the climb was taking. Owen glanced at her face again, but saw no warmth there. She obviously had as little concern for their welfare as his own and would probably drag them onward, even if it killed some of them.

But something else bothered Owen. The rest of the team were all male, very fit, absurdly self-confident, and obeyed one of their own—Halloran Reed—without question.

Owen recognized their bearing, plain speech, and blunt manners from his own time in a militia. Earth’s empire—the Helvetic League—was weak and aging. What were their soldiers doing so far beyond their own frontiers?

Rayker’s voice pierced through the wind. “I thought guides led their clients,” she said in a mocking tone, “not the other way around.”

Owen felt a little heat return with a flash of anger. She had the arrogance so typical of Helvets.

“Go on ahead without me,” he said. “See how far you get. You need more than a map location to climb a mountain without getting yourself killed. I just need a moment—”

“You’re slowing me down,” she snapped. “I thought I was paying for the best guide in the colony?”

“You’re paying for the only guide.”

He turned to inspect the ground ahead of them. A gentle snow-covered slope stretched off to the east, while a steep rocky climb awaited them to the north.

This mountain was unknown to Owen, lying further beyond his usual range than he had ever been before; further than any human had explored on Caldera. Only cheap satellites crossed the skies, and the terrain data they provided was not high resolution.

He had studied the ridge lines on their approach, and, with Rayker’s images, they had formed a rough approach plan. Now he worried he had lost his sense of their location. The white air shrieking around them was too thick to make out landmarks.

He turned back to the rocks above and tried to push his anger away. “Up,” he said.

“You’re sure?” When he didn’t reply, she snorted with derision. “Typical colonist. Always unprepared—”

“We ascended the ridgeline for three hours, so I think we’ve reached a cutback up to the col—a pass between the lower peaks—which should open into your valley. But it’s easy to get confused in the mountains, and sat photos can’t help you navigate rough terrain.”

Rayker gave him a look, like a cat watching a cornered mouse.

“To be brutally honest, lady, my professional advice is that we should turn back, camp below the clouds, and come back once the weather has cleared.”

She shook her head. “No—it’s up there. We must find it.”

“Find what?” Owen snapped. Despite his earlier enthusiasm and curiosity, she had never once shared the true goal of the expedition.

She didn’t respond at first, and when she did, her tone was as icy as the wind. “The valley. Unless you’re too weak to continue?”

Owen matched her stare until his eyes watered, then broke away. He ought to have walked away from the expedition, and he hated the way Rayker and her team looked down their noses at him—a lowly, uneducated colonist—but he needed the money.

Even more, he was an explorer. When he wasn’t working on his rundown, lonely farm, he spent every moment of his time in the mountains, discovering new trails, conquering unknown peaks, and watching the sunsets and sunrises over vistas never experienced by another soul.

Or so he had thought.

But Rayker, and whatever powers she served, had found their own secret in the shadows of his mountains, and he had to know what it was. Besides which, their first meetings had been cordial, and her smile had been so charming.

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He motioned for her to continue. She scoffed at him, but, after a moment’s thought, started climbing the rocks.

The ascent ran up a broken cliff, requiring them to climb with hands and feet. It was steep—not enough for a rope, but enough to make for a dangerous fall. Owen pushed away the fog of fatigue as he concentrated on every foot placement, and handhold. He stopped thinking about time, as he often did under stress, looking only to the next ledge, or the next rest point. His muscles burned, the pain hitting him in waves, and he settled into the mindlessness of a man who can wait out torment.

At last, the mountain side opened above him, and he found himself on better ground beneath the col. He trudged up the slope, following Rayker, and as he crested the rise, he saw a vast open space that disappeared into the low cloud blanket—a valley.

As they advanced, the wind died, and sunlight broke through the cloud cover. Boulders littered the ground, some as large as a house. They were piled atop each other in places, creating a maze of confusing nooks and crannies. Something felt wrong about them. Boulders were usually smooth from weathering, but these rocks were jagged and sharp, like they had been hacked off the mountainside with a giant chisel.

Navigating through them was tricky, and Owen had to climb, jump, and squeeze through the tight gaps, taking care that he didn’t slip and fall. Thick snow made for treacherous footing, and he nearly went down more than once. He shuddered as he imagined himself catching a limb in a crack as he fell, breaking it in two. Rayker’s expedition had taken him far beyond his already sizable comfort zone.

But what was she willing to risk the safety of herself and her men to find?

She stopped near the center of the valley. “The coordinates were incomplete, but it’s somewhere around here.”

Owen caught occasional glimpses of the ridgelines through the clouds above them. “Do you want to tell me what you came here to find?” he asked.

She shrugged, now apparently unconcerned by the question. “If you see it, you’ll know.”

“Great.”

He glanced back down the slope to see Reed slowly cresting the rise with another man. Even though the climb had been exhausting, Owen had seen how relentless the soldiers were. Unlike other climbers, they did not become sluggish and careless after a hard day. No matter how much fatigue weighed them down, they were always diligent with their tents and equipment. No doubt they would be as eager as Rayker to begin the search for the expedition’s actual goal.

He respected their drive, even if he didn’t trust them, but he was also keen to discover what these Helvets were after in the wilderness of an alien world. Was it a new meteorite the League had been tracking, with important scientific implications? Or an experimental probe that had strayed off course and crashed? Owen had to know, though a glance around the mess of rocks gave him doubts about their chances for success.

He sighed. “Well, it’s going to be tough finding anything other than snow in this weather.”

“We have plenty of time,” Rayker said airily. “We can camp among these boulders if needed—they offer adequate shelter.”

The rest of the men arrived and took a quick break, but they soon broke off into pairs and headed into the rocks. Owen found himself alone, and he wandered aimlessly towards the valley’s cliff wall, letting his eyes dart towards the slightest oddity in the landscape.

The team searched for hours until night fell, and they had to switch on head torches. Caldera’s moon—a blackened sphere whose tectonic plate boundaries glowed a livid red, while vast lava flows poured across the surface—rose against the stars. Its light gave an eerie red tinge to the shadows. Meteors sailed across the sky like sparks thrown out of a fire.

A prickly sensation ran up Owen’s spine as he rounded a tall column of rock jutting from a cliff. He stopped dead. The torch light had flickered across something odd in the darkness, but he wasn’t sure what.

Goosebumps ran across his skin. A desire to leave the valley and never look back consumed him. No, not a desire; an instinct as old as time. He shook his head and slowed his breathing. He focused his mind on the moment, as he often did while climbing, when he was searching for the right move, hundreds of feet over certain death.

Moving closer to the rock, he could make out the form of a deep crack running up the pillar. Inside the crack, barely visible, a dull metal door nearly twice his size was built into the mountainside. Stenciled over the head were words written in a script unlike any language Owen had ever seen. His breath caught. This was something far more profound than he had imagined.

It had to be what Rayker was searching for, but he could not believe what he was seeing. Since humanity’s expansion into the stars, no sign had ever been found of alien intelligence. The first settlers on Caldera had landed less than five decades ago, and he was the only colonist who went into these mountains. But some League bureaucrat had sent Rayker and her team to go looking for this doorway? Where did it lead? What was the Helvetic military up to on his home world?

Owen briefly wondered if he should pretend he hadn’t seen anything, but obsessed as she was, Rayker wouldn’t leave the valley until she found what she was searching for. With the soldiers combing every inch of rock, they would come to this cliff eventually.

And whatever lay beyond the doorway could transform the destiny of humanity. A shock of excitement ran through Owen’s nerves as he realized he would get to discover this secret before anyone else.

Guilt followed the rush of emotion. His personal feelings were irrelevant. The colonists of Caldera had no idea what lay beneath the surface of their planet, or that a foreign military had discovered it first. Owen’s duty was to go further, if only so he could report back what was happening in these mountains.

His hands shook as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a signal flare. It popped off with a brilliant green light that pierced throughout the gloom of the valley.

Once Rayker had brought her men over, Reed and another man struggled to crack the door with a pry bar. Inside they found a dark tunnel, and Rayker strode forward, followed closely by the soldiers. They ignored Owen as he fell in behind.

Typical Helvets; not even a word of thanks.

After some distance, the tunnel emerged onto a balcony overlooking an immense underground space. Flashlights cut through the darkness, revealing giant crystals, many of which were larger than a human. Perfect geometric shapes, interlaced with striated patterns of all colors, decorated the cavern walls. Owen recognized them as much larger versions of the crystals he often found on his hikes. He called the gems bilrusts, and he collected them to sell to farmers who worked on the plains.

A bridge of rock reached out from the near wall, crossing the gulf to tunnels on the opposite side. As they traversed the span, Owen wiped away a layer of dust from the carved parapet, and saw mirror-polished stone. He cut off a gasp of breath. The surface was inlaid with spider-thread, intricate patterns and runes that shifted in color under light. No human technology could have created this structure.

Once over the bridge, Rayker approached a panel carved into the wall. As she passed her hand across it, a type of indecipherable sigil appeared, which she examined, before turning towards one of the downward sloping tunnels.

Owen’s pulse quickened, but he could no longer contain his curiosity. “How do you know where you are going?” he asked, breaking the hushed silence.

“That was a sign,” Rayker said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I can read it.”

“But this place can’t be human!”

She laughed. “What do you know about aliens, mountain man?”

“No sign of intelligent life has been found on any colonized planet, including Caldera…” His voice broke off as he wondered why he had mindlessly accepted this commonly repeated factoid.

“So the galaxy’s power-brokers have told you.”

Owen’s cheeks flushed with anger. “Right,” he said. “So, the Helvetic military has somehow discovered secret alien ruins—is that it?”.

The others stopped and stared at him.

Reed spoke first. “Why do you think we’re military?” he asked.

Owen rolled his eyes and gave Rayker a pained look.

She had the decency to look contrite. “Well, perhaps you could use a bit more practice passing yourself off as a civilian, Reed.”

Reed’s eyes flashed annoyance at Owen. “Yes, Ma’am.”

Rayker turned to Owen and gave him a wink. “Would you like to see some alien technology?”