Page 25

Under other circumstances, Jane knew she would think this ride down the shaft would be fun.

The platform she was standing on was dropping quickly, at the type of fun speed an adrenaline junkie like her would normally appreciate. Fast enough to make it feel thrilling, but not fast enough so that she had trouble keeping her feet planted on the device as it whooshed downward.

This, however, was not a circumstance which was allowing her to enjoy this particular thrill ride.

This is bad…This is bad…This is bad!

She had no idea how she had triggered the platform, and she had no idea where it was taking her. She also had no idea how she would get back up to the surface if for some reason the platform wouldn’t take her.

She glanced at her air gauge, which was displayed as both a status bar and as an estimated time remaining value on the lower edge of her helmet’s visor. This planet’s air was not breathable by humans; the ratios of oxygen and nitrogen were too far off. Whatever was about to happen, Jane realized, she had to at least get herself back aboard her Spacehawk—where there was a supply of breathable air—in less than an hour.

“Belivet to Team Nine, can you read me?” she asked.

“I read you, Jane,” Veronica answered, breaking protocol by addressing her by her first name.

Jane was relieved…at least she still had contact with her team.

“Still dropping,” she reported. There really wasn’t anything else to report. The walls of the shaft—as revealed by her helmet’s spotlight—were featureless, and also seemed to be made of tungsten.

“The Fordham has been alerted,” Veronica told her.

“So…has anyone else been as lucky as I have?” Jane asked.

“Negative,” Veronica replied. “In fact, the other away teams are wondering how you got the thing working.”

Jane was kind of wondering that herself. She hadn’t done anything. All she had done was step on the stupid platform, get scanned by that stupid contraption in the ceiling, and then—

“Blast!” she muttered when the only plausible explanation came to her.

“What?” Veronica asked, her voice sounding worried. Jane couldn’t help smiling wryly. Veronica was a good girlfriend.

“Whoever was aboard that unspac scanned me,” Jane said, remembering the encounter. “How much you want to bet they somehow fed that information— my information—to whatever systems are running this place? In other words…”

“You were the key,” Veronica finished for her. She paused. “It… kinda makes sense?”

Jane rolled her eyes.

“ Kinda my ass,” she said. “Anyway, how far from the bottom am I?”

“A little more than fifteen meters,” one of those annoying ensigns reported. Jane thought it was the cute Lydig.

“I hope this thing has brakes,” Jane muttered. She was still dropping rapidly. But no sooner had she said that when she felt the platform begin—thankfully—to slow.

“Chat later,” she told those above her. “This thing is slowing down.”

“Copy,” Veronica began, “but shouldn’t we—”

Jane killed her comms. It was against regulations, but she wanted to focus, and she didn’t need Former Ensign Vale and her merry band of current ensigns chatting her ear off.

The platform had now slowed down to a crawl. Jane unshouldered her rifle and held it in the high port position.

When the platform stopped, Jane turned until the light from her headlamp revealed a dark chamber to her right. She instantly brought her rifle up to firing position. A second later, a series of lights came on in the chamber, illuminating it brightly.

“Holly?” she prodded.

“I am detecting no lifeforms,” Holly responded. “We are alone.”

Jane lowered her rifle, but only a little, and entered the chamber. It was smaller than the one on the surface, but like the one above, was fashioned out of tungsten.

“They liked building things that last,” Jane quipped to herself.

In the center was a console of some sort that stood about waist high.

Jane turned her comms back on.

“Made it,” she announced.

“Lieutenant,” Veronica replied, sounding aggrieved, “may I remind you that switching off comms during an away mission is against regulations!”

“I hit the wrong button,” Jane said. “Anyway, there’s no one down here. Are you getting my helmetcam feed?”

“We are,” Veronica confirmed. “So are all the other away teams. I’m also sending a hovercam down.”

Jane rolled her eyes.

Big audience. Better not screw up.

She approached the console. When she was about a meter away, a small device popped up from the left side of it, surprising Jane and making her lift her rifle again, ready to shoot.

The device turned towards her and emitted a scanning beam. Jane stood still and let it do its work. It lasted about two seconds. When the beam switched off, the scanner disappeared back into the console.

“Guess I passed,” she said. “Again.”

Another portion of the top of the console slid open now, and a different…thing slowly rose up.

Fuck!

Jane took a step back. She kept her rifle trained on it, though she kept her finger on the trigger guard, not the trigger. So far, after all, this… experience had been innocuous, and she didn’t want to accidentally shoot something she shouldn’t.

But this new development was keeping her on edge.

The thing that arose from inside the console was clearly an artificial construct, not a living being. However, it had clearly been fashioned with care to show as much detail as possible…

“Holly…” Jane prodded.

“I’ll need you to use your portable scanner, Jane,” Holly responded, “as your suit scanner is insufficient.”

That meant lowering the rifle.

Jane muttered an expletive under her breath, but shouldered the rifle and quickly removed her scanner from the utility belt, training it on the thing.

“It is a robotic device,” Holly said. “Quantum processor controlled with a titanium endoskeleton, and a type of thermoplastic elastomer covering it. The clothing is made of woven aluminum fibers, and the hair is…actual hair. It is drawing power from a nuclear source beneath this chamber.”

The robotic device was just under a meter tall, and depicted a being that stood on two legs and had proportions similar to humans, Lydigs, Croesians, or any one of a number of Milky Way Galaxy species that had evolved on their individual worlds to end up with bodies analogous to those found on other planets.

The thermoplastic elastomer that was being used as skin was a light shade of blue, and it was wearing what could only be described as a sleeveless ankle-length dress. A hint of breasts swelled the chest at the same point they would on a human, Lydig, or even Croesian woman.

The face was rather elegant, with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes that were currently closed. The mouth was wider than a human’s, but there wasn’t a nose. Long red hair cascaded down from the scalp and didn’t stop until it reached the hem of the dress.

Jane couldn’t help thinking that all of that hair must be a bitch to wash.

Her guess was that the beings this… toy represented weren’t as small as this, though experience had taught her she needed to be careful about making such assumptions.

Suddenly, the device opened its eyes. Even creepier, the eyes turned towards Jane.

And even creepier than that …

The device smiled.

***

The robotic device started speaking in a mellifluous voice that was very feminine, and in a language which incorporated clicks and whistles as part of its vocabulary.

As it spoke, a video projection was displayed on one of the tungsten walls.

At first, it depicted a slowly spinning planet, which Jane recognized as this one. Bright points of light which were circling the planet were obviously meant to indicate artificial satellites. Jane even saw a handful of large structures in orbit…space stations.

The image zoomed out to reveal that the planet was part of a solar system of five other planets, including what looked like two gas giants, all orbiting a star, and that this planet was second from the star.

The image zoomed out again. This time, the focus changed to a different star. Jane had no idea what the distance scale of this video was, but she guessed that the second star wasn’t terribly far away from the solar system—astronomically speaking. Perhaps, less than a hundred lightyears.

Suddenly, the second star went supernova, and a shockwave of stellar material was sent out in all directions.

The video returned to this planet. Now, however, there was something else in orbit, something much, much larger than anything else.

The image zoomed in on this structure. Jane recognized it immediately: it was a shipbuilding yard.

The next few minutes of the video was focused on showing what was being built.

It was massive! Far larger than the Fordham , far larger than anything anyone had ever seen in the Milky Way so far.

Jane had seen it before. It was the ship that had been included in picture form in the transmission she had received.

The next scene depicted vessels launching from the planet’s surface and rendezvousing with this enormous ship in orbit.

The scene after that showed the gargantuan ship breaking orbit and zooming away into deep space.

Then, the shockwave from the supernova reached the solar system, and really did a number on it! The planets were all thrown from their neat elliptical orbits. The innermost world, which apparently was an uninhabited rocky planet, collided with its sun.

This planet, however, had been blasted free of its star’s gravitational grip by the shockwave of the supernova, and floated away, becoming a rogue…

But somewhere out there were the beings who had once called this world their home.

All during this presentation, the robot continued speaking, evidently providing the narration for this story.

When it was over, the robot fell silent, its eyes watching Jane.

“So that’s your story,” Jane said to it.

No sooner had she said that when another section of the console opened, and something else emerged. It was metallic—Jane was willing to bet it was tungsten, since that seemed to be a theme—and was fashioned into an abstract shape that kind of looked like the letter W had been overlaid with the numeral 8 . The 8 portion of the design was blue, and Jane recognized the shade of blue as being the same as the alien spacecraft she had encountered. The item was about the size of her hand.

Instinctually, she knew she was meant to take it, and so she lifted it off the console.

“Fuck, tungsten is heavy,” she muttered, feeling the weight of the item.

She had no idea what she was supposed to do with this thing. She knew that it would be quarantined on the Fordham until it was determined to be harmless. She also knew that it would be studied by just about every subsection of the Science Division. But once they were done, she was going to petition to have it returned to her. It was her right, technically. The… thing had been given to her, and according to the Unitary laws governing gifts and/or salvage, this whatever-it-is was her property.

Besides, she felt a connection with these beings now. As it turned out, they hadn’t invited the Fordham to this planet…they had invited her . As such, she wanted to hold on to this reminder of her experience.

“Jane, we really need to return to your ship soon,” Holly warned. “You have less than thirty minutes of air left.”

“Yes, dear,” Jane replied dryly. She suspected that the platform that had brought her down to this chamber would readily bring her back up to the surface once she stepped on it. But before she turned to head back to the shaft, she gave the little robot a salute of farewell.

“Hope to meet you soon,” she told it.

***

Back up in the surface chamber, Jane stepped off the platform. She noticed Veronica and the ensigns looking at her with something akin to…awe.

“What?” she asked testily.

Why did ensigns—and recently former ensigns—always act so weird?

She looked at Private Swyburne who gave her a shrug.

“That was amazing!” Veronica exclaimed. “This whole mission has just been…amazing!”

“And you’ve done an excellent job leading it,” Jane said. “Well, except for the part where you let me get kidnapped by a weird alien robot doll. But now we have to—”

“Does this kind of experience happen to you all the time?” the Lydig ensign asked eagerly. Jane had already forgotten her name. “I would imagine that as a starfighter pilot, you have had some very interesting adventures!”

Before Jane had a chance to answer, the Ventorian ensign spoke up. Jane had also already forgotten her name.

“Were you afraid when you went down into the shaft?” the Ventorian asked.

Holly had to translate the question for Jane because Ventorian vocal anatomy made them incapable of speaking any human language.

Before she had a chance to answer that , the other human ensign—again, Jane had no idea what her name was—asked, “Would you meet with our class again and tell us all about it?”

“Ooh! Great idea!” Veronica said to that ensign.

Jane rolled her eyes.

Another talk in front of a room full of ensigns?

But of course, she knew she would do it. It would be difficult for her to deny Veronica anything at this point.

By now, Veronica and her ensign buddies were talking over one another, asking Jane more questions, practically begging her to show them the artifact which she had been given in the chamber below, and which Jane had stowed in a retrieval sack attached to her utility belt.

Jane held up her hands. Her…admirers shut their mouths. She then pointed towards the exit.

“Ship. Air. Now,” she stated.

“Right!” Veronica said. “Of course!” She turned to the ensigns. “Okay, let’s pack everything up and get back to the ship!”

They were ready to leave the tungsten building in five minutes. As the team started walking back to the Spacehawk, Jane listened to the conversation the ensigns and Veronica were having.

“We finally get to experience a polonium sweep!” one of them said.

“Oh, that’s right!” Veronica replied enthusiastically. “We finally got to set foot on an unknown world!”

“We won’t be decon virgins any longer!” another ensign said.

Jane said nothing, but she shook her head.

Ensigns!