Enigma
Page 5
She afforded herself a moment to peel off her helmet then stood there before the console, thinking through her next move. The cockpit interior looked like a cross between a futuristic spacecraft, and an old, 2oth century space shuttle.
Zoe gingerly climbed into the pilot seat and grabbed a ring-binded flight manual that had been shoved between two monitors. “I may not know how to fly you manually,” she whispered to herself. “But…” She cracked it open, thumbing through pages until she found the Emergency Autopilot Protocols for Orbital Insertion and Re-entry. She began flicking switches.
DHHHHHRRRRRR. The entire ship shuddered as its powerful ion engines rumbled to life.
Zoe grinned. This was going to work. She continued entering docking protocols into the navigational system. A nearby monitor chimed as readouts revealed the ship’s computers cycling through code. Zoe could now feel the ship hovering slightly like it was gently rocking back and forth. She peered out through the foredeck to see that she was indeed rising above the lunar surface.
The ship’s thrusters were already kicking up clouds of dust.
“Arming launch sequence… checking propulsion system… finalizing stabilization… full internal power is a go.” She entered the final sequence, closed the manual, and settled back into the pilot seat, wrangling with the thick safety harnesses. She waited another moment, bracing for the tsunami of G-forces she was expecting to slam into her any second.
But it never came.
Was something wrong? she thought. Frowning, she clipped off her buckles and leaned forward to examine the console readouts.
Suddenly, an overhead alarm started to bleat loudly throughout the cockpit, counting down to liftoff.
“Shit!” As she went to strap herself back in, she was violently ripped out of the pilot’s chair by the collared rim of her spacesuit and heaved across the bridge deck. She slammed face-first into another passenger chair, crashing to her knees.
Wearing her spacesuit and helmet, Kwong marched towards her, pissed as all hell. “Think you’re going to steal this ship and jump back to Earth without us?”
Zoe scurried to her feet and charged Kwong like a wounded bull, tackling her around the waist. She drove Kwong into the pilot console.
Wham!
The ship suddenly jerked upwards, climbing into space. Engines roared as everything was flung topsy-turvy. They both began sliding vertically along the bridge.
Kwong managed to snag the armrest of a chair and pulled herself upright. With her helmet visor cracked, she threw it off and painfully reached for the console. When her fingers managed to curl around the control stick, she pushed it forward to level the ship out.
That was until Zoe brutally wrenched her head back and savagely bit into her cheek. Kwong screamed, her arms flailing wildly.
The XF-500 careened recklessly above the lunar surface, its maneuvering stabilizers firing wildly. Then it banked hard, nosing down to plummet into the surface.
Boom!
The ship slammed into the curved side of a deep crater and slid into the abyss-like darkness.
Chapter Fourteen
L ucas and Perez moved along the corridor, with Adams in tow closely behind. The deeper they went, the darker it seemed to get.
When Perez reached out to touch the walls, Adams blurted out a warning. “Don’t!”
Startled, her and Lucas spun around to him. “Christ, Adams,” she hissed with annoyance.
“Just saying - every time you touch something, weird shit happens.”
Lucas shone his light up to the ceiling, illuminating pipes and beams. Each one must have weighed hundreds of tons. “Whatever this place is, it’s old.”
“Thousands - millions of years old,” added Perez. She dabbed her finger in a trail of greasy liquid which had streaked down the wall from one of the conduit wires. “Looks like it was built entirely out of some kind of iron oxide.” She brought her gloved finger up to her visor to examine it. “Almost like black ore.”
Lucas suddenly shushed her, holding his hand up.
Perez froze. Adams raised his rifle.
Lucas turned to them, listening intently. “You can hear that too, right?”
They both nodded yes. There was a dull mechanical hum emanating from deep within the walls.
“Sounds like a generator,” whispered Adams. “A machine.”
Lucas looked around with quiet reverence. “I think that’s what this place is.”
“A machine?” asked Perez.
“Maybe a cog in one.”
When they rounded a corner, two monolithic columns stood before them. Both of the retaining structures were embedded into solid rock. By terrestrial standards, these giant support columns would be a marvel in Geotechnical engineering and design. In the middle, was a massive sealed door, towering in height. It had rounded edges with a dark and metallic surface. Its octagonal-shaped bolts in each corner gave it the look of some ominous submarine hatch.
Lucas stood there, unable to find the words. All he could do was turn to the others. There was no doubt now. All skepticism had been long banished.
This was alien technology.
Perez craned her head up at the structure with equal wonder and dread. “I think we’ve just made history.”
Somehow, Lucas managed to speak. “And then some.”
There was another moment of silence as they absorbed the monumental implication of this.
Perez shone her light over to an identical control panel.
When she approached it, Adams groaned again. “Perez, come on. Leave it alone, already.”
“Human curiosity is a great motivator, Adams.”
“It can also get you killed,” Adams retorted.
Before touching the panel, Perez turned to Lucas.
Lucas gritted his jaw and gave her a taut nod. “Do it.”
Adams braced himself, stiffening his aim. “Swear to god…”
Perez ran his hand over the panel. Nothing happened. She tried it again, this time, with a flick of the wrist.
BDDDDMMMMMMMMMMMM!
There was a deep, mechanical jolt from the door. All around them now was the sound of internal gears grinding. The entire corridor was vibrating hard.
A sprinkle of tiny rocks hit Lucas’ helmet visor, causing him to look up at the ceiling. He aimed his flashlight to see the pipes and beams were all twisting apart. These were part of some giant lock mechanism.
Instinctively, they began to back-peddle from the huge door.
Lucas uttered a single word. “Oops.”
Mitchell was climbing back into the rover when Chakma spotted the activity below. “Holy…!” Mitchell joined him again at the edge of the sinkhole.
Way down below, the strange domed structures were turning clockwise, like gears. Unbeknown to them, they were connected to the massive hatch Perez had just unlocked. They could both feel an intense rumbling beneath them. The lunar surface was shuddering.
Not good.
Alarmed, Chakma glanced down to see the small rocks vibrating, moving across the surface like snail shells. “This must be what’s causing the quakes.”
Then, the ground underneath them rippled like a wave, throwing up geysers of dust. Time to bail. They both turned to make for the rover when everything underneath them suddenly dropped away.
Chakma’s scream shrilled into Mitchell’s helmet comms as he managed to snag the rim of the chasm, rocks showering his helmet visor. When a huge chunk barreled over him and clipped the side of his helmet, the visor cracked. Oxygen immediately began hissing out.
Chakma was squealing like a newborn baby as he skidded uncontrollably down the steep embankment of the sinkhole, large rocks pummeling his suite like catapulted boulders. “Arrgghhhhh!!!!” He disappeared into the seemingly bottomless pit below.
Gone.
Engulfed by total and absolute darkness. After another second, mercifully, the screaming stopped.
Mitchell’s breathing had quickly become a ragged gasp as oxygen
continued to jettison from his spiderwebbed helmet visor. With rocks and debris continuing to bombard him, he fought against it, somehow managing to crawl his way out of the abyss below. He scrambled to his knees, fumbling for a small switch located at the back of his helmet. His complexion was now a sickly, beetroot color, and his icy lips had turned blue.
He found the switch and pressed it. Scchvwhupp!
Suddenly, a new protective visor wrapped around the damaged one, sealing his helmet from the near vacuum. As his O2 began to equalize, he sucked down a mammoth gulp of air. He knelt there for another beat, filling his lungs with air until he rose and wearily staggered towards the parked rover. The lunar surface was still shuddering, and the gears continued to grind in silence below.
Chapter Fifteen
L ucas, Perez, and Adams huddled together as the giant hatch began to open. Unfathomable locks jolting and with mechanical thuds, intensifying as a neon-blue light flickered to life around the rim of the door. Parts of the structure were folding back into itself. A swoosh of air nearly knocked them off their feet. It was artificial atmosphere greeting them. The hum of machinery was louder now, coming from far beyond the hatch.
Paled, Lucas stared at the entrance ahead. This was incredible. As if entranced, they all stepped through into a myriad of corridors - some as big as subway tunnels - intersecting and diverging.
But it was the tunnel ahead that the three of them found intriguing. There were lights.
Activity.
Lucas led them to a small circular balcony.
Before them was the sprawl of a massive subterranean city. Easily twice the size of NYC. But this was unlike any city they’d ever seen before. It was some dark alien Necropolis, with jagged towers and strange buildings that loomed out of a suffocating blanket of atmospheric fog. Millions of lights shimmered and twinkled from Favela-like dwellings. The murky sky teemed with ships of different shapes and sizes. And in the center of all this: a giant, churning core. An inner sun.
The three of them were somewhere between terrified and exhilarated. It was momentous. They were simply too overwhelmed to move.
Somehow, Lucas remembered how to speak. “…Oh… my… god…”
TO BE CONTINUED?
Want to see a continuation to this story? Email or Message me. I’d love to hear your thoughts. If enough readers want it, I’ll endeavor to release a new episode every 2-4 weeks.
Also by Terrance Mulloy
The Earth Epsilon Wars
Book 0: The Invasion
Book 1: The Emissary
Book 2: The Defector
Book 3: The Revered (Coming Soon)
Book 4: The Soldier (Coming Soon)
Stand-Alones/Short Stories
Alien Prison Ship
Enigma
Upcoming Book Series
The Solar Warden Saga
The Halfworld Chronicles
About the Author
Terrance resides in Queensland, Australia, with his wife and a Staffordshire terrier named Clifford. When he's not fending off radioactive Kangaroos, he can usually be found lurking somewhere around his office, conjuring his next book.
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