A shuttlecraft pierced a thick coat of clouds like a bullet. From a distance, the craft looked very much like a bullet. Its hues and colours ranged from grey to black, its slick, elongated shape was softly angular. The shuttlecraft’s surface appeared to be seamless as if the vehicle was built out of one piece.
It plummeted toward the planet’s surface, its trajectory straight. The clouds barely acknowledge the passing of the alien craft, as if it was a ghost.
Despite its speed, the atmosphere did not resist it. A watcher on the ground would see nothing but a tiny dot moving across the sky without leaving a trace.
Inside the shuttlecraft ten ascenders silently waited for landfall.
The only sound in the cabin was a soft hum of the gravity engine. A lack of vibration could trick anyone into believing that the shuttlecraft was still sailing through the vacuum of space.
“Three minutes to contact,” the AI said, forcing Keynes to peel his eyes from the otherworldly view beyond the windscreen.
Heavy clouds hung low, painting the sky with many hues of orange and streaks of grey. The landmass looked far more sinister; jagged, rocky and lifeless. But it wasn’t the same type of lifelessness as deserts or mountain peaks from Earth. No. This place was lifeless to the microbial level. It was sterile.
And highly toxic.
Red and brown colours dominated the desolated scenery, cut by darkness of its many deep valleys and gorges. Places where Keynes’s imagination conjured alien monsters lurking in anticipation for their prey.
Obviously, there were no monsters. The planet was dead like the moon. It was far from perfect but it was the best they had at their disposal. The other six planets from this star system posed threats and issues Keynes and his crew weren’t ready to tackle yet.
Some were too hot and too bright, others too dark and too cold. One of the planets had several thousand active volcanoes and the atmosphere so thick with dust it locked the planet in a perpetual night.
What Keynes and others had been looking for was a reliable surface without active geology and severe weather. Their planet of choice had occasional hurricanes that mostly appeared near the equator. The planet’s geological activity seemed dead.
Lifeless or not, Keynes and his crew were excited about the prospect of being the first humans to take a step on a planet outside the solar system.
Keynes swivelled on his chair, taking a glance at the other nine ascenders, sitting comfortably in their chairs in two rows. As the mission leader he sat in the forwardmost and slightly elevated seat, also called the command. The vehicle was fully autonomous, requiring no pilot, so the position of the chair was more symbolic than functional.
The nine pairs of eyes watched him with varied intensity and a different spectrum of emotions. Their selection for the mission was a source of headache and a huge debate that didn’t end even when the spaceship’s main AI provided a solid argument for each candidate’s selection.
Now that the messy process was over, the thought about it put a smile on Keynes’s face. Lem Solaris had selected quite a peculiar bunch for his spaceship’s crew. They were rowdy, outspoken and fearless. Their arguments extended to days and covered the entire spaceship.
His crew was not without surprises though with some familiar faces Keynes had never expected to see again, especially not in such circumstances.
Persephone and Willow Croft were prime examples. What Lem Solaris had thought about when selecting these two Keynes could only guess. Their Talents were valuable but Keynes had a hard time trusting them. And yet, the spaceship AI argued to include both in the maiden mission to the planet. Croft was the mission’s rift expert while Persephone’s Talent made her—theoretically—the second most important person after Keynes. At least as long as her desire aligned with their needs.
Neither of them had any authority in the current group though. Keynes had chosen as his second in command Kora, which she had swiftly refused and transferred to her sister, Natalia.
The spaceship AI had quietly convinced Keynes that having Natalia as his second was the optimal choice. Suspiciously, no one in the entire crew had any issue with this.
Apart from them, the mission included Pierre, a terraforming expert from Mars and Roman, another terraforming expert from Venus. They were responsible for finalising plans for their first surface base.
The eighth member of the mission’s crew was Trisk. His Talent allowed him to shape rock. Keynes couldn’t hide his ‘excitement’ at the thought of another underground base.
The ninth member was Sellana. She was a runic and formation savant. No matter how much the AI praised Persephone’s value, Keynes could only marvel at the ideas Sellana had brought to the table. There seemed to be no limitation to what runes and formations could do.
The last person was Ul. His role, while not extravagant, was vital not only to their mission but to their survival. Ul was a chief and biologist. He was here to tell them if they were going to starve to death.
“Two minutes to contact.”
Lem Solaris’s gift, while invaluable, hadn’t come without harsh limitations imposed by the System. They were left stranded in an unknown star system with several inhospitable planets, no fuel for interstellar journey or a star map to guide them. The spaceship came with six months worth of supplies and each day brought them closer to a disaster.
“Status of the target location?” Keynes asked the AI.
“Without changes,”came the reply.
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The question was more or less without merit as the AI continuously monitored every aspect of their mission and would inform them about any issues. But Keynes didn’t just want to passively rely on the AI. Five hundred people relied on Keynes and expected him to lead and while he didn’t feel ready to be a leader he had no choice but to become one.
This responsibility terrified him.
“Leader?” came a voice through the suit’s in-built communication system. “Should we go over the procedure one last time?”
Keynes turned to Natalia who stared furiously at the tablet in her hands. His second in command was obsessed with following rules to the letter. Keynes mused his answer for a couple of seconds then agreed, eliciting several groans from other members of the crew.
“We are going to land near the largest Level 1 rift cluster on the planet. Twenty-seven rifts inside a two kilometre radius. However the terrain is extremely harsh and poses significant risk to Level 1s and 2s. Hence no one under Level 3 would be permitted to leave the designated safety zone.
After the leader and I leave the shuttlecraft you will wait for the green light before exiting the vehicle…”
Keynes zoned out. There was no need for him to listen.
“One minute to contact.”
Instead he mulled over their options in regard to their current situation.
The spaceship capabilities were seemingly unlimited as far as they discovered but they were not cheap. Each action performed by the spaceship and its AI cost mana. One of the hardest to come by resources for ascenders.
At Level 1, ascenders had 100 mana points and meagre regeneration of 4.2 points per hour. By some unknown rule, unsupported mana regen was always the same and equaled mana capacity divided by 24. Mana capacity scaled by 30% each Level, making substantial difference at Higher Levels but so much at the lower ones.
Among five hundred crew, there were only a handful of ascenders with Level 4 and above. In total the crew’s mana pool was just above 50k points. Half of that was eaten by the spaceships’ life support system on a daily basis. A single planetary rift scan had cost them 200k mana, then additional 50k was a cost of running the shuttlecraft and ten spacesuits for a day. Even solving the food issue, these arrangements were not sustainable. An estimated cost of a deep space probe to chart the nearest star systems was several millions of mana.
Their only solution were rifts.
The unnamed planet had 1222 Level 1 rifts. A substantial number. A number that belonged to them, a number that put to shame what Keynes had possessed on Earth.
But still, these rifts were extraterrestrial. An unknown.
“Understood?” Natalia asked on the open channel and seven voices repeated. Keynes and Persephone remained silent.
While his mind dwelled on rifts, his eyes watched the rapidly closing land. This actually made him wonder. Would they one day be able to turn this place into a lush, Earth-like planet? Hopefully.
“Contact in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Contact.”
The landing was like the flight, butter-smooth. If not for the AI and the view outside the windscreen, they wouldn’t know they landed.
“Welcome to… would you like to name the planet?” the AI asked Keynes for a hundredth time and for a hundredth time he ignored it. “Spatial expansion procedure in progress.”
The shuttlecraft interior expanded tenfold, revealing hidden rooms and turning the craft into a temporary base. It was a shame that upkeep cost 50k mana a day.
“Listen up,” Natalia said. “Stay put until the leader and I give you the green light to exit the craft.”
She’s intense, Alice said, startling Keynes. Also, I hate this barren, dead, ugly place.
I thought you’ve stayed on the ship in orbit, Keynes said, smirking.
Jokes on you but one more Perfect State Level and I’d have a bond radius of over a hundred kilometres! You’ll miss me.
Maybe, Keynes replied, while getting to his feet.
Maybe? You were meant to say yes!
Keynes pushed Alice to the back of his mind. He was getting really nervous about this; excited too.
He winked to Kora who patted his shoulder, he followed Natalia to the airlock. The door soundlessly closed behind them but remained transparent. This was one of the coolest features of the shuttlecraft. It was capable of turning transparent any part of its hull.
“All systems are nominal,” the AI said.
“Open the airlock,”Keynes gave an order.
The exterior door opened revealed an alien landscape. Jagged horizon stretched in both directions. Darkness in the gorges and valleys seemed deeper and more sinister. The sky above them looked wrong and not only because the clouds had different colours. They were too low as if about to fall on them.
“Toxicity level: high. Estimated Vitality to survive without permanent damage: 500.”
“That’s a big number,” Natalia admitted.
“Yeah. Best to not lose our suits,” Keynes added.
“These suits are capable of withstanding extreme weather conditions, higher pressure and have a range of physical and elemental resistance…”
The AI went on, listing the impressive capabilities of their suits. Nothing under Level 4 could damage them. And most importantly, their skills and Talent wouldn’t affect them either in any negative way. Keynes’s biggest worry was the interaction with [Chaos Aura] but the AI assured him that counter-measures were in place and he would be warned before irreversible damage could be done to the spacesuit’s fabric.
“Home sweet home,”Roman whistled.
“It has some of Mars’ beauty as well,” Pierre added with a heavy accent. “Colours don’t match but northern parts of Mars have very similar terrain features.”
They remained inside the vehicle but most of the hull went completely transparent showing them as much as Keynes and Natalia could see.
“Leader, are you ready?”
Keynes nodded, considering asking her to stop calling him a leader. It sounded silly.
He took a step and put his foot on the rocky surface. The moment was both exhilarating and anticlimactic. He was the first human ascender on the surface of a planet outside the solar system but the spacesuit made this whole experience dull.
Congratulations and shouts of happiness sounded in the intercom.
“Good luck,” Jedd said. “We are counting on you, boss.”