Chapter 3 - Ruins
(in which there is a fall, a gate, and a corridor)
> "History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?"
>
> --Washington Irving
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While the curved plating of the SandRunner deflected the brunt of the boulder's impact, the vehicle was sent uncontrollably spinning like a top on the slippery ground. The brakes yelled just like the explorers themselves as the rover skidded off the steep cliff, missing the slope-ramp by a few meters. A fountain of swears in several languages erupted from Iraklijs' mouth.
Bright. Less bright. Bright. Less bright. Bright. Less bright.
Yangchen tripped the emergency propulsion lock, and the treads clunked as they oriented themselves into a V-shape. Slowing the rotation in such a way, the rover straightened out, yet only accelerated faster as it careened down the slope.
"Do not brake more!" Altair echoed, calm amid the chaos. "You will destroy the brakepads."
Yangchen complied.
What followed was a barely-controlled half-roll half-fall to the bottom of the crater. Mottles of all colors blurred below the treads. The wind howled outside as everyone pressed into their seats and cowered.
This would be the end if some sort of pillar or outcropping was to be in the path.
But there wasn't. The path was clear.
Instead, at the end of the drop, there was a flat boulder shaped like a ramp. The suspension whined as it bottomed out, then with the sound of shattering glass, the rover went flying several meters into the air.
It went into an uncontrolled tumble. Now this was the end.
…
THUMP!!
"We're... alive?" Iraklijs said, and noticed that the treads were still rolling, though quickly coming to a spot on the broken, spike-dotted ground of the crater-bed. Somehow, they landed right-side-up. There was no wind here, and no other signs of the hurricane.
"Obviously," Ekut said, stretching. "You saved us, Yangchen."
"Don't thank me," the driver said as he turned around in the seat. "I was the one who got us into this in the first place. And thank Altair."
The crystal pinged and lit up with a brilliant yellow light. "I am the guardian angel that strives to preserve all life. It is only a pleasure to help."
Iraklijs patted Altair gently and smiled.
"You could not have foresseen the sstorm..." Zkeh said. "Doess thiss thing sstill drive? We musst pussh forward, anywayss..."
The vehicle rolled forward, then backward. Then it made a turn in one direction, then the other. Then it did two whole donuts. "According to the sensors, our right middle tread and our left back tread are unresponsive. The other four treads are misaligned in varying degrees. But yes, it'll still drive. We could drive to the other side of the planet if we so wished. Sturdy little fella," Dorji chuckled.
"Well, let's see how exactly it got fucked up," Iraklijs said, put his mask back on, and stepped out of the airlock.
Aside from the huge impact dent on the side of the rover, those two tracks had indeed detached, leaving only the wheels. Several wheels of other treads were cracked. He paced over to the cargo bed in the back, and was surprised to see the various equipment crates still secured, despite the cloth roof and sides being torn. The contents were, too, at most somewhat dented. Carbon nanotube cables, and copious amounts of internal padding.
"Could be far worse. Not a show-stopper. No need to waste time and fuel going back for repairs." Iraklijs shrugged to Spots, who curled up nearby. "Yeah?"
"Spots agrees."
Iraklijs looked around. Everyone else left the craft, and his comrades were curiously inspecting the damaged vehicle. But the human cyborg's eyes were fixed forward as he blocked the three shining suns with his robo-hand. "The gate is there. Rangefinder says 250 meters away. Let's park nearby, I don't feel like walking much on this ground."
Tsip, meanwhile, was completely unfazed both by the crash and the condition of the surface, and wandered around aimlessly, occasionally kneeling down to look at rocks. They seemed to ignore the fact that they tripped over every spike and every crevice.
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Soon, the structure's entrance loomed over the dented rover.
Protruding from the cliffside was a rectangular doorway. Twenty whole meters tall and fifteen wide. Completely featureless and shiny, with only a tiny gap between the two flaps of the doors. There seemed to be no lock and no windows.
Zkeh was meditating in the back seat, staring at a gently pulsating red sphere he kept on his person on every journey. The chohjozra then turned his beaked head forward and squinted. "Larger than I... expected..."
"Yeah, looks like we won't have to crawl for once," Iraklijs said. "So much for those e-knees."
"Wassted your money, hrrrm?"
Iraklijs shook his head. "Only paid for the design. Not much. Universal morphic freedom, remember?"
"Spots thinks we should do less talking and more walking," the bquaa mumbled. "Yangchen, stay behind in rover. Keep watch. Be ready to take us in in case of emergency. Understood?"
Dorji gave a thumbs up. "Stay safe!" he waved absentmindedly, then opened a go program on the onboard computer.
"Right, right," Iraklijs got back up.
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Zkeh was carrying a box on his back. In the box was a powerful material and structural scanner, so bulky that anyone else in the team would break their spine or, for the invertebrates, be flattened trying to do so.
They were now at the doorway. Its frigid metallic surface was not actually smooth, but was covered in many tiny Hilbert-curve grooves.
"This is definitely the Silent Empire, yeah..." Iraklijs said, squinting at the pattern. "Just like that trough that apparently got recovered by some military guys three years ago. We still don't know what they were even doing in the Empire or how they recovered it..." he sighed. "Classified, apparently."
Tsip walked up and knocked. No answer came, of course. They knocked again. And again, and again. Iraklijs chuckled and took the scanner, sweeping its 'nozzle' all over first the frame, then the doors themselves, then the crack.
"...don't do that, Tsip," Ekut said. "Just don't. No reason to."
The kseldani flopped backwards and simply stared at the sky.
While Iraklijs continued his monotonous scan, Ekut simply leaned against the door, putting her dish-like ear to its coldness. Silence. They didn't call it the Noisy Empire, she supposed.
They began to meticulously scan the doorway for any clues to what may be beyond, and failed. The scanner failed to penetrate even ten centimeters into the bulk... which turned out to be solid platinum-iridium-osmium alloy imbued with carbon nanotubes. Extremely hard, and extremely heavy. Ekut supposed that this explained why this thing seemed to be unscathed after however many years.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
She frowned after a while. "It doesn't feel like anything short of a main fucking battle tank would even have a hope of putting a hole in this thing. Actually, how old is it? We need a sample of the inside for carbon-14 analysis."
Zkeh, who was just playing around by throwing boulders to make them shatter, began galloping towards the door. A murderous glimmer was in his eyes, while the scythe-like blade of his mattock vibrated so fast that it became a blur.
Ekut, Iraklijs, and Spots opened their mouths in surprise (under their masks of course), but it was too late.
SZCHUNK!
...was the sound the mattock made as it pierced the previous-metal slab. Shards of said iridium alloy went flying.
"There. Ssampless..." Zkeh said as he clipped his tool to where it belonged. It was seemingly unharmed.
Iraklijs was still somewhat shocked, when another event interrupted him.
The gap between the two doors blinked scarlet, in a non-uniform way, as if someone placed a red plastic filter over an antique TV tuned to a dead channel. Static. This was accompanied by a sound that resembled a slowed-down train horn.
"OUT OF THE WAY!" Spots screamed as the slab swung out. The door was opening, and the five were about to be squished like insects. They fled as fast as their bodies could carry them.
In the chaos, Ekut's grapple-gun slipped out of its holster, having been accidentally pulled by an incautious movement of her hand. As it clattered out onto the hard ground, the kaziil shouted something garbled and incoherent in her native language, that Iraklijs figured was something very dirty. Not much else passed through his head; he had to carry the weight of the analyzer with himself.
But they were too slow. The gigantic mass of precious metals was oncoming, a solid tsunami of immense mass and rigidity. "TSSIP!" Zkeh shouted. "WAKE UP!"
Tsip shook their head and sprinted... towards the dropped gun, picking it up on the go. Catching up to the fleeing group in a sudden burst of speed, they brandished it wildly. "Hold my legs. Hold my tail," they intoned emotionlessly.
"W-what-- give me back my--" Ekut whimpered.
"Hold. Now."
She complied. Everyone else complied.
...
It was all a blur.
Spots was the first to recover. Everyone seemed okay, if very bruised, confirmed by their suit-sensors. Except for Tsip. A teal tail and a teal leg were lying somewhere near the cliff-face the group was slumped against. The rest of the body was hopping on one digitigrade foot.
"...not good. Not good," Spots mumbled.
"...what the fuck..." Iraklijs said. "Tsip! Are you okay?"
The kseldani was silent as they gripped the two still-writhing appendages and simply popped them back on. "Saved," they stared at him with their empty black eyes as if nothing happened.
"Thank you," he hugged Tsip while the latter stayed inert. The others joined in.
Everyone confirmed that they had no broken bones and no concussions. Now it was time to look into the doorway that was opened by Zkeh's serendipity.
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It was dark like a cave, if caves were rectangular. All sorts of grooves, holes, and vents lined the walls, all made of the same ultra-heavy material as the doors.
"Lights!" Iraklijs said. "Look!" he pointed into the depths of the corridor. Indeed, faint glowing dots revealed the shape of the dark hallway, appearing as a distorted starfield. "This means there's power here..."
"Maybe inhabitantss?" Zkeh tilted his head.
"Maybe maybe," Spots squinted. "Spots can't be skeptical anymore. Go in. Iraklijs, leave that heavy analyzer at the entrance. Just in case."
Everyone readied their blasters as they entered. There was a slight humming sound that rose and lowered like the noise of ocean waves. Iraklijs held out Altair on a small harness, using the aspect-shard as something resembling an ancient lantern. It cast such a bright light that nobody else felt like turning on their flashlights.
"How do you charge your triangle?" Spots said.
Altair blinked deep red, slowly and menacingly. Meanwhile, the five walked over some kind of black line that cut through the floor and walls, but didn't pay much attention to it at the time.
"Please don't call it a triangle," Iraklijs sighed. "Anyways, it charges from my implants' battery via induction. So I don't need to."
"Triangle, pyramid, hyperpyramid. Same word, same word in our language. Who cares? It's all fluid. Can understand from context. Like thinking - thinking is also just context. I only care about being separate due to working with 'selves'," the bquaa rambled incoherently. "Tsip - my spiritual sibling."
Ekut looked from side to side anxiously. Perhaps Spots' rant disturbed her, or perhaps she was too on-edge to really process their words anyways. She was recording a video of the corridor, with pauses to take still images of various points of interest, of which there were not many.
"Looks like the Silents either packed up very well when leaving, or there wasn't much here in the first place. Maybe the latter. Maybe they didn't leave in the first place", Iraklijs said.
A hint of a vestibule of some kind was visible at the end of the massive corridor, when a high-pitched whining sound resounded from above, a metallic scream that struck fear into hearts both human and alien.
One of the otherwise-nondescript and locked-looking hatches on the ceiling swung open, and downwards dropped some thing that looked like dozens of interlocking, spiky fractal rings. The air around it was filled with bursts of flame and bubbles of some kind of red, seemingly two-dimensional static. This was the thing that emitted the now-deafening scream. It was about half the size of the rover outside.
It rolled towards the group with the speed of a motorcycle, clanking over every bump and ditch in the floor. "NO! FUCK! RUN!" Iraklijs yelled, sprinting back out towards the entrance. After firing a few shots at the grinding abomination of distorted metal and realizing the futility of the puny blaster, he ran even faster than when fleeing the swinging door. Along the way, he grabbed Spots, knowing that the bquaa was much slower compared to him. His colleagues trailed behind, hounded by a cacophony of discordant piping.
But they were, of course, much slower than the beast. It was about fifty centimeters from the lagging-behind Zkeh and Tsip, about to turn their tails into paste, when they leaped over that inconspicuous black line.
...
The robot stopped with a shrill sound that resembled a hundred trumpet crescendos at once, jerking upwards as if hitting an invisible barrier, then rolled back into the darkness, its flames and static suddenly silenced.
"What. The. Everloving. Fuck," Iraklijs said, catching his breath. "I saw some weird shit in ruins and there was that misunderstanding in Yig, but... this..."
Ekut was shivering and breathing deeply. The others weren't in much better states. Even Tsip curled up into a fetal position.
"...do we just... no we can't abandon this mission. No fucking way. We have to figure this out. Call me a daredevil, reckless, a death-wish... this is just too intriguing," Iraklijs continued.
"But if we go back," Spots said, "the living blender will also be back. It'll be there. What do we?"
Ekut tapped her chin, seemingly having recovered. "Contact the ship, tell them that we need bigger guns. Drop by disposable pod. I fucking told you all."
"How big are we talking?" Zkeh said, fidgeting with his mattock. Tsip and Iraklijs inched away in order to not get impaled.
"We want to turn this thing into scrap. Anti-materiel rifles. No, not antimatter, as tempted as I am to suggest that," she chuckled. "Gatling burst lasers. Nuclear-dumbbell rifles. All the grenades. Maybe even a particle-beam wheeled cannon," Ekut said, her snout contorted into a violent grin.
"Won't the brems kill us?" Iraklijs said.
Bremsstrahlung and backscatter, both referred to as 'brems' in jargon, were the reason particle-beam cannons were rarely used in atmospheres despite their great strength and relative simplicity. Unlike lasers, particle beams did not merely pass through the atmosphere; a tiny amount of the radiation was reflected by the air itself right back at the shooter, accompanied by various quantum effects that amounted to similar results. Too weak to vaporize them, strong enough to give them acute radiation sickness.
"Radglass shield," Ekut said. "That's why 'on wheels'. To carry the shield."
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They went back to the rover, carrying some fragments from the gate for analysis.
"Why are you all so...?" Yangchen scratched his head.
Spots rattled off everything that happened.
"Oh, heavens..."
Soon, they made a request to Tekatl, asking for weapon resupplies. After that, they sat down in the cabin of the SandRunner, piled up on the back seats, to eat their lunch while the carbon-14 analysis was in progress.
Iraklijs unscrewed the can of rollmops that he had brought planetside. Filets of herring, wrapped around pickles and garlic.
"Seems fine still," Iraklijs said after washing down a few rolls with bottled tea. "All the way from Earth," he then handed one leftover roll to Zkeh.
The chohjozra just swallowed it like a seagull. "Tasstess..." he just stared at Iraklijs. "...decent," his expression was completely inscrutable.
"...how would you know, eating like that?" the human said.
"We have tasste receptorss in our throat and upper ssecondary sstomach, remember?"
"Oh right. I remember that stuff about three stomachs. You can digest basically anything, right?"
"Yess. Esspecially thesse days."
Ekut, meanwhile, shared some kind of glossy taffy-like substance with Spots, talking to them in a language neither the human or the chohjozra could understand.
The drop pod was now in transit.