by H. G Ahedi
Delta eyed her. “The what?”
“The house has two wings, east and west. This is the east wing.”
Delta rolled her eyes. “Did the diaries mention it was creepy?”
Emmeline managed a bleak smile and began scanning. Again, her scanner beeped.
Delta looked over her shoulder. “What?”
Emmeline didn’t answer immediately. She compared her scans of the west wing to those of the east wing. Something wasn’t right.
“What?” Delta asked again.
“There’s something down there,” Emmeline replied, pointing toward the base of the wall.
“You mean a hidden structure?” Delta asked, checking her scans.
“Or a crypt,” Emmeline said happily.
They entered the east wing. Emmeline’s hands trembled, and her heart beat faster and faster. Her hands were sweaty. She didn’t know if it was fear or excitement. She turned and paused. The scanner showed traces of copper. She looked up, and a chill ran down her spine. Her breath quickened. On the wall was a gigantic shadow. She knew it at once. A shadow of the mythical creature she had read about, the dragon. Her hands reached for her neck as she eyed it. The metal frame and the sculpture had disintegrated a long time ago, but the shadow remained.
“That’s really creepy,” Delta said, stating the obvious.
Emmeline nodded robotically. She knew what the scanners showed, but she felt as if the shadow was trying to tell her something. It was a warning. She remembered the diaries, and the constant hint by the writer to be careful in this house. For the first time since she’d begun this journey, she felt danger.
“There it is,” Delta said.
Emmeline put her thoughts aside and joined Delta.
They stood near a collapsed staircase. Delta was scanning the wall. “The entrance to the crypt was from the first floor. But it’s been sealed by the collapse of the staircase and this section of the house.”
They walked through another doorframe and came to a stop between several racks. Emmeline looked down at the papers and the skeletons of rotten books. She bent over and looked through the collapsed floor. Then she looked up at Delta. “If I’m correct, if we climb down, we could get to the crypt this way.”
Securing the rope, Emmeline was the first to climb down into the dark void. She assumed the basement was at least ten feet underground. When her feet set on the floor, she got the chance to look around. She saw a collapsed wall with a small opening at the top. Her scans showed that there was another room beyond it.
Followed by Delta, she crawled through the small opening and entered the dark room. The air was stale, but surprisingly, there were no odors. Her flashlight barely cut through the darkness. An icy shiver rushed through her. She felt like she was being watched. She took out her scanner and began scanning. The device detected nothing.
“Anything?” Delta asked.
Emmeline studied her face.
Delta looked calm and composed. “You okay?” she asked.
Emmeline moistened her lips. She could feel it but couldn’t see it. Maybe this was why her grandpa hadn’t like coming here. She remembered his words, “I don’t want you to go there alone…ever… understood?” Maybe this was what her ancestor had found out. Maybe they’d felt a presence.
Emmeline turned her attention to the room. It appeared as if frozen in time. It was as big as the upper floor, covered with dust but protected from the calamities that had struck above. The walls were cracked. Framed paintings had fallen to the floor and turned to dust. The skeletons of two big couches sat in a corner. The carpet had degraded, and the old cement floor was visible underneath it. Three benches still stood, holding broken glasses.
Emmeline turned to the wall behind her. Her scanner beeped once, then twice. Then it went crazy. Using her hands, Emmeline cleared the dust off the wall and took a step back. On the wall was a picture of a dragon in a circle. Just like in the diaries. It looked like a logo. She turned to her scanner. On the other side of the rock, there were traces of stone, glass, and metal.
Suddenly, Emmeline felt a cold touch on her neck. She gasped and turned around. Darkness surrounded her, but she felt certain there was someone there. She glanced at Delta, but she didn’t seem to sense it. Emmeline stood in dead silence, watching for a few moments, then turned toward the wall again.
“Did you find something?” asked Delta.
“Yes.” Emmeline gestured toward the wall, trying to control her beating heart.
Delta scanned the area. “You’re right. There’s something behind this. But we can’t blast through. We’d have to remove few stones.” Delta touched the wall.
They used knives to cut through the concrete.
“This is odd,” Delta pointed out. “Look at this. The cement here looks. . . new.”
Emmeline leaned forward and saw that the cement they had just removed was whiter than the cement around the other stones. “You’re right. Someone may have found the compartment and resealed it.”
It took a while, but eventually, they were done. They removed four stones and put them on the floor.
Delta illuminated the interior with her flashlight. “Okay. This might be it.”
Emmeline stepped forward and saw old cloth. She unfolded the cloth and saw something glowing under her flashlight. It was a rock in an airtight container.
“That’s a special container, isn’t it?” Delta remarked.
“Yes. Usually used by geologists to preserve samples,” Emmeline answered. The sample had been well preserved, and the tamper-proof glass container was intact without a scratch.
“What’s it doing here?” Delta asked.
“I have no idea. I was looking for the plaque. Let’s take it with us.” Emmeline handed it to her friend. Then she reached for the next object. In her hands, she held a plaque made of stone. It was rectangular, about thirty centimeters in length and twenty centimeters in height. On it were deep lines, possibly carved by a sharp object. The lines originated from a semicircle on the top and went sideways, looking like sunrays. Emmeline flipped it over and saw small circular indents in the left-hand corner. She counted them. In total, there were seventeen.
Stone made plaque (front and back)
* * *
“I’ll look around to see if there’s anything else,” Delta said before walking away.
Emmeline stared at the plaque as if waiting for it to reveal its secret. She heard a beeping noise.
“Emmeline. . .”
There was something in Delta’s voice that terrified her. She turned and saw Delta at the far end of the hall, standing in front of an opening that might once have been an arch-shaped door. Now it was sealed by stones.
“There’s someone here,” Delta hissed.
Emmeline’s heart pounded. She left the plaque on the floor and joined Delta.
“There are human remains, but these are less than a hundred years old,” Delta explained. “Not like the ones we found in the garden.”
Emmeline studied her scanner.
“But these aren’t buried,” continued Delta. “He died here.”
The data started pouring in. “He was middle-aged,” Emmeline said, watching the information light up her scanner. “The skeleton has multiple fractures. It has been. . . smashed.” She scanned the area above the arch. “He might have died when the wall collapsed.”
Delta’s fingers played on her scanner. “According to these readings, this part of the house collapsed a few years after Nemesis struck. The impact affected the structural integrity. This wall must have crumbled on whoever was trying to enter or leave the crypt.” She met Emmeline’s eyes. “Do you think it was Alexander?” she asked.
Emmeline looked at the sealed wall. “He disappeared five years after the Nemesis attack. This could be why.”
“The position of the body shows he was leaving. The stone behind him crumbled first, and then he was thrown ahead and crushed.”
“If he was leaving, the secret compartment wo
uld have been left open,” Emmeline argued.
Delta nodded. “Maybe he resealed it and was on his way home.”
Emmeline felt sad. “He should have been careful.” She stood quietly, wondering. The one ancestor who’d known about the plaque had died trying to find it, and when he found it, why did he reseal the compartment and leave? Why didn’t he take it with him? Why did he leave a rock sample with it? She didn’t know.
A robotic voice echoed, “Emmeline Augury and Delta Dune. You have exactly two-and-a-half hours to leave Sector 1001. I repeat: you have exactly two-and-a-half hours to leave Sector 1001. If you fail to comply, the guard ships will escort you out of this region. If you fail to comply or accompany the guard ships, an official investigation will be launched.”
Before it could continue, Delta answered back, “Guard ship. This is Delta Dune. Don’t worry, we’ll be leaving soon.”
“Affirmative. Thank you for acknowledging my message. I will keep a lock on your signal.”
“It could be someone else… a thief?” Emmeline wondered.
“Only one way to find out,” said Delta.
Emmeline felt her stomach twist.
Delta kneeled. “Okay. One of the bones is just beyond these rocks. Should we get it?”
“Is it safe?” asked Emmeline.
“We could use the laser cutter. I’ll lower the intensity of the beam. If we can get a bone, we can get a DNA match and find out if this was really Alexander.”
“If it is, we’ll come back for him. I’m not leaving him here.”
Delta smiled. “Of course.”
It took a lot of patience, but slowly, the red beam cut through the thick stone. Delta bristled at the repeated warnings from the guardships. When Delta was done, Emmeline cleared the rubble. Wearing protective gloves, she picked up the sample collector which looked like a pair of tweezers. She carefully grabbed the piece of bone. The top of the sample container whizzed open, and she placed the bone inside it. “Seal,” she said. The container sealed.
“It’s the fifth distal phalanx, from the small toe of his left foot,” Emmeline said, turning to her scanner. “The dryness and the humidity in the atmosphere have slowed down its degeneration.”
“Good for us,” Delta said. “Are we done?”
Emmeline looked around. She’d hoped the plaque would tell her something, but it was just a rock with lines. She had no idea how to decipher it. “I think we’re done.”
It took them a few minutes to pack up and reseal the secret compartment. The presence Emmeline had felt didn’t return, but it left her curious. She wondered if she could ask her father or her brothers. She pushed away the thought immediately. Her questions would lead to more arguments and her father telling her she was wasting her time.
Before leaving, she cast one last glance at the crypt and wondered what other secrets it held.
Astra flew out of Earth’s atmosphere and approached the spiral gates, which opened with a bright flash.
The robot spoke again. “Thank you for your visit. Please come again. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. Please remember, if you need to visit other parts of the planet, you do not need a permit. Have a pleasant journey. We hope to see you again.”
Astra
Delta needed little assistance flying back to Titan, so Emmeline loaded all the data onto the computer. Hours passed as Emmeline worked. As time flew, she felt her excitement grow. She forgot all about the crypt and the presence she had felt in the house.
“What the. . .?” she muttered when she looked at the chart detailing the compounds that comprised the plaque. Minerals like calcium, aluminum, and zinc were common in rocks on Earth. That was no surprise, but there was something odd here. Among all earthly elements, Emmeline had detected something completely unexpected. Her fingers danced across the panel. Then she waited for the computer to finish. A detailed analyzes of the compounds popped up on the screen. Her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped.
“No. No, that can’t be possible,” she whispered to herself. She turned to the computer and redid the analysis.
Emmeline didn’t know how much time passed before Delta joined her.
“Anything exciting?” Delta asked, taking a seat beside her when Emmeline didn’t reply. “Why are you not analyzing the plaque? That’s what we came for.”
“I’m done with that.”
“Okay. What’s this? It looks like a geological report.”
Emmeline nodded. “It is. Alexander created and documented it.”
“Why are you looking at it?”
Emmeline shook her head. “Something isn’t right.”
“What?”
“Something doesn’t add up.”
“What doesn’t add up?”
Emmeline turned to her friend. “You know that comets are mostly made of dust and ice. The heart of a comet is called the nucleus which is made of hard rock. When the remaining part of Nemesis entered Earth’s atmosphere, several small rocks separated themselves from the parent body, forming a meteoroid shower. Remember how I told you that Alexander was one of the team leaders assigned to study Nemesis? They collected several pieces of the meteorites that originated from the comet.”
Delta nodded.
“The meteoroids were covered with a shiny black crust created by excessive heat while they descended through Earth’s atmosphere,” Emmeline continued. “Most of them were calcium-aluminum-rich meteoroids. What’s not commonly known is that eighty-two percent of meteoroids contain a dark-gray matrix of small mineral granules called chondrites. These chondrites aren’t found in rocks on Earth. The chondrites in the meteoroids originating from Nemesis were made of magnesium-rich olivine, surrounded by iron sulfide. But the teams found several isotopes of oxygen, mainly O-17, carbon, silicate, iron, and over a hundred amino acids.”
“Okay. This is scary,” Delta said mockingly.
“I haven’t gotten to the scary part yet. When I analyzed the plaque, I found something very disturbing.” Emmeline paused. Her hands were shaking. She had done the analysis four times to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake.
“Emmeline, what?”
“The plaque is made of the exact same compounds that were found in the meteoroids from Nemesis. Same isotopes, equivalent number and percentage of amino acids. The levels of carbon, silicate, and iron are identical. I also found traces of the same chondrites that were found in Nemesis in the plaque. Delta, the plaque and Nemesis are connected!”
On autopilot, Astra neared Titan and swayed toward the giant colony. Sunlight penetrated through the windows of the craft and fell over Emmeline’s backpack. Suddenly, streams of yellow light emerged from the backpack. The yellow glow filled the ship and then died out.
The Unexpected Visitor
Titan, Deck 1, Anastasia’s office
Anastasia sat in her office, checking daily reports submitted by all departments. Her office was an average-sized space with a ceiling that offered a view of the heavens. The unblinking stars looked as if an artist had methodically painted each one with planned precision. The windows showcased vast corridors that linked the outer rim with the inner rim of the space station. As it was nearing midnight, the passageways were empty. The station was dead silent.
Nothing had changed. Things on Titan were near perfect. As usual, Anastasia worked late while others were already in bed.
She scrutinized proposed projects requiring approval from the Imperial Command. In the long list, she wasn’t surprised to see that Dr. Kent had resubmitted the Phoenix project. She wasn’t a scientist, and she didn’t like Dr. Kent, but she had to admire his persistence.
Over the course of half an hour, she read through and approved ten projects from her crew. They were low risk and needed limited resources. She knew the authorities would promptly approve them. On the long list, she saw a name that brought a smile to her face. Prometheus’s Captain, Mykel Lockhart, had submitted a project called Poseidon. You always knew how to draw attention, Anastasia thought to he
rself.
Her excitement grew as she read through the project proposal. During its voyage toward Earth, Prometheus had detected a surge of gravitational waves in a binary star system about thirty light years from their position. They couldn’t isolate the source. There was no sign of a supernova. The two stars in the system were not the cause of the waves. There was a possibility of two black holes orbiting each other or merging could create the wave. But Prometheus’s crew hadn’t been able to detect a black hole. From her own experience, Anastasia knew it was a challenge to detect and isolate them. The other issue was that Prometheus was too far away. Due to their obligation to return home, Mykel had transmitted his findings to the Imperial Command and put in a request for the Poseidon project.
It was a high-risk project. It needed a lot of resources and crew and would take Prometheus ten years to complete. Anastasia’s heart sank. Ten years was a long time. But Mykel had been gone for years, and he often left to chase new mysteries. She could still remember the day he’d left for the first mission, and she didn’t stop him. She didn’t want to hold him back. And personally, she was as ambitious as him and didn’t like anyone holding her back. That day had changed their lives. They drifted to different sectors of space, hardly having time to speak. Then she got married, and it felt like Mykel and their love had faded away in the darkness of space.
Anastasia like most nights couldn’t sleep or rather, didn’t feel like it. From the corner of her desk, she picked up a photograph of her girls, who lived on Earth with her ex-husband, Martin. Like everyone who chose this profession, she’d had to make sacrifices. For her, the hardest part had been choosing her career over the man she’d married.
Anastasia had been the commander of Marion for ten years and had not only raised her kids but also tried her best to maintain a good relationship with her spouse. It hadn’t been perfect; it had been hard work. And she thought she wasn’t a good mother; she shouldn’t have had kids. Managing a ship and family had been a challenge that had left her weary, heartbroken and lonely.
