Prelude to Extinction
Page 20
“And you couldn’t tell me in advance?” he pressed with mock indignation.
“I knew if I told you, then within an hour you and your buddy Jack there would be discussing it. It would only be a matter of time after that before Don got wind of it and spoiled everything. Call me selfish, but it was our discovery, and we wanted to take it through to the end ourselves.”
“Well, you could’ve told me and asked me to keep it secret.”
“Would you have?”
Kurt’s hesitation in answering was enough of a response for her. She continued, “Anyway, I need to get down to propulsion. Meet you back in the cabin in an hour.”
“Sounds good,” Kurt replied. “See you then.”
Chapter 18 – July 22, 2124
Jack settled into the shuttle’s co-pilot seat and felt a dose of adrenalin rush through his veins. The anticipation was undeniable: They were about to land in a city that spanned an entire globe. He labored to suppress his feelings, though, and concentrated on the tasks at hand. This was nothing more than a desperate salvage mission – there was no place for excitement. Turning to Devon, he said coolly, “Let’s get started.” His pilot answered with a nod, and powered up the engines.
It had taken three, long days to find a location hospitable enough for a landing attempt. Most of the planet appeared to be little more than a furnace lashed by winds exceeding the strongest of hurricanes. Mammoth blazes burned at the dozens of impact points evenly spaced around the globe. They would likely smolder for years to come, further heating the blistering gasses that passed for its atmosphere. Don’s analysis suggested that the attack occurred within the last two or three months, likely with antimatter bombs having yields in the millions of megatons. There was no way to tell who did this. However, their goal was painfully obvious: total annihilation.
Their landing area was in the North Polar zone – a region that showed little obvious damage. Considering the thoroughness of the devastation, Jack was unsettled by the fact that this convenient little area was left intact. His gut told him not to trust it, but they’d already consumed over fifteen percent of their supplies and hadn’t made any progress on understanding how to get home. There was no choice. At least the knowable risks were minimal. The landing zone’s temperature was a tolerable forty degrees Celsius – the temperature of a hot summer day back at the old Johnson Space Center. The winds were much calmer too, but still blew at gale force.
The shuttle bay door slowly slid aside, revealing the expansive cloud covered globe. Directly below lay a large cyclone ripping at the surrounding cloud bands. Even from orbit he could see movement as streams of clouds slowly spiraled into the vortex. Devon touched the controls and they glided toward the storm. A moment later he banked the craft left, and the polar gap in the clouds shifted into view. Though partially obscured by a persistent haze, Jack could already make out the features he’d studied in earlier reconnaissance images; far below lay row after row of identical, dull metallic domes. At this altitude they looked like inverted dimples, belying the fact that each dimple rose nearly two kilometers above the surface. The artificial landscape was the same pewter hue he’d seen in other photos.
As the shuttle descended toward their target, Jack focused on the individual domes. Their surfaces were smooth, and lacked the finely etched details seen elsewhere. Each one’s downward slope butted up against the rise of its neighbor, yielding a surreal, grid-like panorama of uniform hills and cusped valleys. The low angle of the sun, reflected gently off the top of each row, and cast long, arching shadows across each adjoining row. Devon banked right to follow a trench formed by adjacent lines of domes. The shuttle was low enough now that the domes were large, dominant structures that passed quickly beneath them. The repetitive rise and fall of their smooth, metal surfaces was hypnotic, and fooled his mind into thinking that he was skimming just above waves of some steely sea. There was no frame of reference; no way to objectively tell how high they really were. Jack was surprised when a quick glance at the altimeter told him they were still more than five kilometers above the peaks.
He gazed ahead past the monotone progression, toward the horizon. There, the drab, metallic surface arced gently against the pale, orange sky. Its innocuous color and clear air hid the menacing nature of the gasses that surrounded them: The poisonous mixture would kill as quickly as the vacuum of space. Don couldn’t say for sure whether the air had been breathable before the attack, however the planet-wide fires now filled it with an endless collection of toxins.
“What’s our ETA to the landing site?” Jack asked, more as an attempt to pull his attention away from the mesmerizing view, than to actually obtain an answer.
“Two minutes,” Devon answered curtly, focusing his attention instead on the shuttle’s instruments.
Jack strained his eyes as he stared at the horizon, and was just able to pick out a distant, vertical line rising above the endless sea of domes. This was their destination. As they closed on it, it transformed from a near dimensionless line, to a majestic spire, towering some thirty kilometers above the surface. Its square base was more than twice the size of the adjacent domes, but tapered quickly to a thin, sharp spear that stood centered above the planet’s North Pole. The graceful form brought to mind images of the Eiffel tower. The alien spire, however, was solid and devoid of any decoration or feature. The crew had debated its purpose, but came up with little more than fanciful speculation. His favorite was Don’s idea that the spire worked in conjunction with the planet’s magnetic field to harvest energy from the central star’s solar wind. It would yield vast amounts of energy; but this was all little more than guess-work.
Devon slowed their approach at a kilometer’s distance, and circled the dominating structure. As they glided around to the far side, Jack caught sight of their landing zone: A large, oval platform about a quarter of the way up the tower. It was a few hundred meters long and extended nearly a hundred meters out from the sloping wall. Centered against the spire was a tall, recessed, arched entry way. The shuttle descended slowly and shuddered as it was buttressed by the gale outside. Jack looked past the blowing clouds of dust, and estimated that they were about fifty meters from the entrance when he finally felt the firm bump of the landing pads making contact with the ground.
“We’re down. I’m shutting off main engines,” Devon announced.
The hum of the thrusters died out, allowing the whine of the winds outside to fill the room. Jack drew a breath and opened his mouth to say something, but nothing worthwhile came to mind. Instead, they sat in silence, listening to the ebb and flow of the powerful gusts. Devon typed a few commands into his console and read off the results, “Winds are blowing at ninety k-p-h, with gusts up to...about a hundred and twenty. External temperature is forty-three degrees Celsius.”
Jack turned around to look at the other two members of his expedition team. Kate, the communications engineer who doubled as a linguist, sat expressionless. Alex, on the other hand was glued to the port window. They were friends long enough for Jack to know there was no taming his raw enthusiasm. The man was brilliant, but didn’t seem to have a grasp on how desperate their situation really was. Catching sight of Jack’s gaze, Alex quipped, “Well, are we going to sit here all day or what?”
There was no proper answer. If it wasn’t for the fact that he needed Alex’s skills as an exobiologist, he would have left him back aboard the IPV. “OK, listen up. I know we’ve gone over this before, but it bears repeating. This environment is as hostile as open space. You must at all costs protect the integrity of your suits. If your suit is compromised, the toxins out there will kill you. So once we get into the building, assuming that we do, be very careful about jagged edges and other sharp objects. Is that understood?”
He waited until he was answered with a series of muted OK’s, and then continued, “Alright then. Let’s suit up.”
The cramped environs of the shuttle became even more crowded as they struggled with their suits. Devon’s elb
ow glanced off of Jack’s jaw, prompting him to think that maybe jamming four people into a three-person shuttle wasn’t such a good idea. However, time wasn’t on their side, and he needed every one of them on this landing in order to accomplish what he wanted. As he snapped the seal on his helmet shut, Devon’s voice came in over his suit radio, “My air supply and comm. equipment check. Jack, turn around, and I’ll check the hoses on your environmental pack.”
He obliged, and after getting confirmation that it was ok, double checked Devon’s. It took a moment longer until Alex and Kate confirmed they were ready. “I’ll exit first,” Jack said. Squeezing past the others, he slid into the small airlock, drew a deep breath, and closed the inner door behind him. A soft warning tone buzzed when he pressed the “Open” button on the outer hatch. The door quickly slid aside, and he was instantly stunned by the din. The roar of the wind shook his body, and was accompanied by a steady shriek as the gale whipped past the ship. He stepped down onto the landing platform, and barely kept his footing as a gust shoved him up against the side of the shuttle. There was a crackling sound that he quickly realized was sand and dust lashing his suit. The immense tower stood in front of him; its broad, sloping walls curved upward and converged into a spire that faded away into the dusty, orange sky. He stared in awe until a voice in his helmet caught his attention, “...outside. Are conditions safe for...”
It was Devon, but the waves of wind and sand drowned out the message. Jack shouted in response, “You’re going to have to speak up. I can barely hear you.”
“Is it safe for us to proceed?”
“Yes, but be careful.” He leaned into the wind to keep his balance as he took a few steps and surveyed the surrounding terrain. The dark-gray, metal platform was devoid of any markings. The fact that it sat above the surrounding structures, though, afforded him an uninterrupted view of the endless rows of domes stretching toward the orange horizon. Despite the violent weather and attacks, the pad’s surface was smooth. Surreal ripples of dust and sand danced across it, their reflections following in the lightly polished finish. His eye, though, was drawn back to the mammoth, tapered structure before him. Broader than the platform, the tower stretched for a kilometer to either side. In front of him was a peaked arch of polished metal standing nearly three stories high, and framing two, heavy black doors. It had the feel of a medieval cathedral’s entrance, or at least a modern variant on one.
“Damn it’s loud out here!” Alex shouted with a voice loud enough to make Jack cringe. He turned to see the scientist walking toward him. Behind him, Devon was helping Kate out of the airlock. “What’ve you found so far?” Alex said as he reached Jack.
“Nothing that I can make any sense of. Let’s just proceed slowly.” He fought against the wind with each step, stopping a couple meters short of the entryway’s threshold. There were no handles or obvious buttons. “Fan out and see if you can find any controls.”
Jack stepped forward and ran his hand along the metal frame. Its burnished surface was perfectly smooth and devoid of even the smallest scratch or imperfection. He brought his face close to scrutinize it, but instead found himself staring at his helmeted reflection. As with the rest of the structure, there were no markings. He stepped back to examine the doors, but the featureless, black forms told him nothing. Their sheen made it difficult to focus on them, and instead he caught himself gazing more at the reflection of his beige, environmental suit, than at anything else. “Alex,” he called out.
“I haven’t found anything yet,” was the response.
“I didn’t expect you or anyone to. Go back to the shuttle and get some equipment; hand-held radar, ultra-sound, anything you think’ll let us get a glimpse of what’s behind this.”
“OK. Be back in a minute.”
“Devon, go with him. Get the torch and some explosives.”
“Explosives?” Alex protested.
“Yes. We don’t have time to fool around here. We need to get in, one way or another.”
“I still think that’s a little extreme,” Alex pressed.
There was no time for debate. Jack opened his mouth to chastise the man, but thought better of it. “Please, just do what I asked.”
There was no further deliberation as the two men made their way back to the craft. Jack looked to Kate, who was examining the area around the entrance through a hand-held, wide-spectrum viewer, and asked, “Find anything?”
“I’ve scanned across the UV and near-infrared but don’t...”
A powerful gust and its accompanying a spray of sand drowned her response. He waited for the din to subside before calling back, “Say again. I can’t hear you.”
Kate’s shouts were barely audible over the tempest. “As far as I can tell, there are no external markings.”
Frustrated, Jack walked back to within arm’s reach of the doors. Reaching out hesitantly, he ran his fore-finger along the seam where the doors met, but didn’t feel anything; they were sealed so perfectly that it might as well have been a line painted on a single, solid surface.
Alex tapped him on the shoulder. “Want me to start there?” he asked, gesturing toward the seam with the ultra-sound sensor.
Jack just nodded and stepped out of the way. “Devon, besides the torch, what were you able to get?”
“Half a dozen shape-charges with RF triggers – each has got a two-hundred-pound yield, so I don’t think we’ll need more than one or two.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that. If it’s anything...”
“Jack, I’ve got something!” Alex called.
“What?”
“The readings are noisy, but I’d say the doors are only ten centimeters thick. After that, there’s a void. I’m not getting anything else on what’s inside. But at very least it means there’s a hallway or room in there.”
“That’s about what I’d expect.” He didn’t need to say anything else. Devon quickly moved into position with a torch and set to work. He watched intently, but couldn’t tell if any progress was being made. After about a minute, the blue glow from the torch faded, and his pilot took a moment to examine his work before standing up. When nothing was said, Jack asked, “Any luck?”
“It didn’t even mar the surface...”
Jack quickly cut in, “Don’t worry, this wasn’t unexpected. That’s why we’ve got the explosives. I’m going to use them all on the seam.”
“All of them?” Alex’s interjected.
“Yes, all of them. I think it’s relatively safe to assume that this is the same stuff we encountered on the asteroid. I’m not even sure the twelve-hundred-pound yield of the charges will crack this thing. But it’s all we’ve got. How about those readings you were taking – did you find any weak spots, besides the void behind the door?”
“No, it all looks the same – at least as best as I can tell. It’s so dense that I’m not getting a very clear signal. I guess it makes the most sense to just go with the seam.”
Jack took a black, metal, storage case from Devon, knelt down by the base of the door and opened it. Inside, six, grey, hemispherical charges the size of softballs were set in protective white foam. Though unarmed, he exercised care as he pulled them out and affixed them one by one, in a straight line along the bottom portion of the seam. “I want you all to take up positions along the wall, outside of the arch. The charges will detonate inward, but I don’t want any injuries from flying debris. In fact, make sure you’re at least twenty or thirty meters away from the arch itself.”
Jack tapped a button at the top of each charge, activating their small green ready lights. His doubts about their possible success were growing, but he had to try. Taking a deep breath, he stepped back and surveyed the area one more time: Devon and Alex were standing off to the left of the archway, Kate was waiting for him several meters away on the opposite side. He strode at a measured pace against the wind toward her, and pressed a button on his small handheld controller. A synthesized voice in his helmet announced, “Explosives armed.”
Jack spun away from the wall too quickly, and was knocked to the ground by the wind. “Devon, Alex, report!” There was no verbal response. He scanned the platform for them as he got back to his feet, but his view was obscured by clouds of mustard yellow smoke pouring from a break in the doors. The high winds caught the plume and blew it away from him, forming a steady stream of yellow gas that rushed past Devon’s and Alex’s position. He steered clear of the smoke, and finally spotted two figures –- one dragging the other out onto the platform.
“Devon?”
“Here sir! Alex is hurt bad.”
As Jack ran toward them, the gasping ceased. Devon was crouching over the other man, turned to look Jack in the eye, but said nothing.
Jack pushed him aside in disbelief. Alex’s motionless form lay there, his lifeless eyes staring straight back at him through his helmet. The numbness of shock washed over him, as he looked upon the frozen expression of pain on his friend’s face. His stomach churned and he tried to turn away, but the effort was futile. He only managed to divert his attention slightly and saw that something had burnt away whole sections of Alex’s suit. His singed right shoulder was fully exposed to the noxious fumes outside. There were similar burns and breaches all along his right side. The numbness gave way to a burning rage. He swung around to face the structure and its continuing stream of smoke. His fists were clenched to the point of pain. He wanted to do something, throw something, anything to release his wrath, but there was nothing he could do.