by Richard Fox
“I don’t see an entrance.” Aignar thumped his heel against the surface. “Something tells me breach kits might not work.”
“Sixty-five square miles of surface area,” Gideon said. “Company commander wants us to do a grid search. Call out anything unusual.”
“This whole place is unusual,” Aignar muttered.
The Dragoons spread out into a line and started walking. Roland scanned back and forth over the glinting metal.
“Sir, did anyone manage to get into that other Qa’Resh facility?” Roland asked. “The one with the spinning layers.”
“There’s no definitive yes or no on that,” Gideon said. “But there is a large number of classified files about that operation. If the Breitenfeld showed up and couldn’t get past the front door, I suspect there wouldn’t be as much to classify.”
“The Breitenfeld again,” Aignar said. “What didn’t that ship do during the war?”
“It had the only jump drives in the Earth fleet,” Cha’ril said. “That a strategic asset was put toward strategic goals isn’t a surprise.”
“It wasn’t the only jump drive,” Roland said. “Eighth Fleet had one, used it to slow the Xaros hive moon coming in from Barnard’s Star. My father was on that fleet.”
“Who wants to bet there was someone named Ibarra on the away team that went into the other Qa’Resh…thing?” Aignar asked.
“I wish we knew what they’re looking for here.” Roland half-turned around and gazed up at the white skies. “Bet the Union could use whatever…where did that come from?”
Roland aimed his gauss cannons at a black circle several yards wide on the ground just behind them.
“That wasn’t there a second ago,” Aignar said. “I walked over it. We all walked over it.”
The circle shimmered with surface tension, like the top of a glass of water one drop away from overflowing.
“Other lances are reporting the same thing,” Gideon said.
“Roland,” Aignar said as he punched his friend on the shoulder, “go rub your face in it.”
“Piss off,” Roland said. “Remember when you asked me to look in that crevice on Nimbus? I ended up with some sort of octopus thing on my neck doing…you know what it was doing.”
“I believe it was copulating with your neck servos,” Cha’ril said. “I still have several pictures if you’re unsure what happened.”
Gideon stomped a heel against the ground.
“Roland, you are the junior Dragoon,” the lieutenant said. “Examine it.”
“Sir.” Roland said as he knelt next to the circle and snaked a camera wire out of his wrist. It moved through the black surface like it wasn’t even there. Beneath was a long, evenly lit tunnel that sloped downward at a slight curve. The dimensions of the tunnel gave him pause, as the diameter appeared nearly double the width of the black circle.
“Lead’s inside, plenty of room for us.” Roland drew his camera line back in with a snap.
Gideon took a thin metal cone off his back and set the base against the edge of the circle. It locked against the surface, then unfurled into a satellite dish.
“Let’s go.” The lieutenant slipped into the dark portal. No sound escaped as his feet struck the tunnel walls.
Cha’ril got to the edge and hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” Roland asked.
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong,” she said, her voice strained. The Dotari put a hand next to the edge and kicked her feet up and into the portal. Roland went after her. His sabatons slid against the tunnel and he had to put a hand to the wall to slow to a stop. He looked back to the portal and saw a perfectly smooth black circle, almost perpendicular to the tunnel. Roland looked back down the tunnel, then back to the portal. The portal’s angle felt…wrong.
“No walk path,” Aignar said as he slipped through. “No residue on the walls. Guess we’re not coming through a smoke stack or sewer line.”
“We still have comms with the surface.” Gideon raised an arm and swung it forward, the old hand-and-arm signal for “follow me.”
While the tunnel still had a nitrogen atmosphere, Roland noted that his footfalls made no sound at all when they struck the tunnel walls. They descended for several minutes, the tunnel twisting down like a spring coil.
Their path leveled out and opened into a dome that stretched for miles. In the center, sheets of gold and white glass the size of the Ardennes’ hull plates spun slowly, their shapes changing from two-dimensional flame motifs to fractals dancing within fractals and star fields that shifted moment by moment.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Cha’ril looked away from the object.
“What the hell is that?” Aignar asked. “The way they’re moving around each other, it’s impossible.”
“By my pace count, we’ve gone a little more than a few kilometers.” Roland pointed to the ceiling. “That is ten kilometers high.”
“Captain Sobieski warned that we may experience some non-Newtonian physics in here,” Gideon said.
“Great.” Aignar said, shaking his helm. “Space magic.”
“Not magic,” Cha’ril said. “Just a use of space and time we cannot explain.”
“That is exactly how you define magic,” Aignar said.
“Is that what we’re looking for?” Roland pointed at the slow-moving wall sections in the center of the dome.
“I think it’s…art,” Gideon said. “Visitors arrive at the surface, descend through the tunnels, and see this.”
“It is a mistake to put our own cultural patterns over an alien civilization so…alien,” Cha’ril said.
“Let’s just call it art until we figure out for sure if it’s a Qa’Resh privy or not,” Aignar said.
“Look.” Roland zoomed in on white dunes around the base of the moving sculpture, the dark dot of a portal on each one.
Gideon walked toward the dunes, his stride long and purposeful. As they neared the dunes, Roland felt the ground shift slightly against his feet. He found himself standing in sand. He looked back and the once-solid floor he’d been on was now white sand.
“That’s…odd,” Roland said. He leaned to one side to look at a pattern in the sand behind Cha’ril, and she shoved him out of the way.
“Move!” she hissed.
Roland walked to the pattern and sent a picture to his lance.
“Treads.” Gideon stopped. “Armor treads.”
“One of the other lances must have made it down here first,” Roland said. “They would have left a mark for which portal they went through. That’s protocol—right, Cha’ril?”
Cha’ril stood next to a portal, her helm angled toward the ground.
Roland pinged her systems and found her external optics were shut off.
“Cha’ril? What’s wrong?” Roland asked.
“I am having difficulty…Dotari…we…” Her optics came back online. “We do not handle spatial irregularities well. Our eyesight is keen, designed to see and process information better than humans. When I look around, it’s like my eyes are on fire. The angles are wrong. They’re wrong!”
Roland looked at Aignar, who shrugged.
Gideon put a hand over her helm optics.
“Power down all external inputs but audio,” the lieutenant said. “You’re dangerously close to redlining, are you aware of that?”
“Just give me a minute,” she said. “My system needs to adjust.”
“Your neural load is far too high,” Gideon said. “Your brain is trying too hard to make sense of information it can’t.”
“I am armor,” she said. “I am fury, not some bundle of nerves. I will not fail this mission. I will not!” She tried to push Gideon’s hand away, but he grabbed her by the back of the head. A panel on her helm slid open and access wires in Gideon’s hand connected to her armor.
“If you redline, you will fail,” he said, “and we would be less without you.”
Cha’ril grabbed at Gideon’s hands. There was a snap and Cha’ril�
�s armor went rigid.
“I locked her in and set her armor to follow mode.” Gideon stepped back and Cha’ril’s arms fell to her sides. “The Dotari are usually resistant to any neural overloads…but this is a curveball. The only armor that’s ever been in a place like this was human and they never had any problems. I’m taking her back to the surface. The Scipio hasn’t gone far. They may be able to double back and extract her.”
“One of us should take her,” Roland said. “You’ve got—”
“Either of you ever walked someone back from the redline? I’ve trained you all since selection. Don’t tell me you’ve picked up that skill while I wasn’t looking. She—and this mission—are my responsibility,” Gideon said. “You two keep searching. Follow search protocols. If I don’t catch up to you in the next eight hours, return to the surface.”
“But Cha’ril—”
“Where did I stutter while giving orders?” Gideon snapped. “What wasn’t crystal clear?”
“We’ve got it, sir,” Aignar said.
Gideon ran back to the tunnel. Cha’ril’s armor followed, mimicking his stride perfectly.
“She’ll be all right,” Aignar said. “Good thing the lieutenant knew how to recognize a near redline.”
“I hate to think how he learned.” Roland pointed to the nearest dune. “Split up or stay together?”
“Together, you seem nervous and defensive. I’ll keep you safe.”
“I am neither nervous nor defensive,” Roland said.
“That is exactly what a nerv—hey, wait for me.” Aignar hurried after Roland to the dune.
Roland touched the sand along the edge of the dark portal. His finger left an indentation, reminding him of a childhood trip to a beach and building a sand castle with his parents.
“The other lance should’ve left a multi-spectrum tag around whatever portal they went through,” Roland said. “Left another tag once they came back out.” He switched between optics feeds as he scanned along the edge of the portals.
“I’d say it shouldn’t have taken them long to go through any of these dunes,” Aignar said. “They’re a little bigger than a Mule cargo compartment. But this Qa’Resh tech…who knows what happens when you go through? Might end up on Earth in the 1990s. Get sent to some far-flung galaxy on a living ship with a misfit crew or—”
“There.” Roland said and pointed to a dune farther along the circle. “Got a hit on the ultraviolet.”
“We want to follow them or go our own way?” Aignar asked.
Roland got to the dune and placed his palm over a streak running perpendicular from the edge of the portal. A pale-white light lit up in his palm and a word appeared within the streak: ERREGELA.
“The mark should be the name of the lance and what time they came through,” Roland said. “Who’s ‘erregela’?”
“Let’s go ask.” Aignar pointed to the portal.
“It’s your turn.” Roland stepped back and waved Aignar toward the pitch-black circle.
“Fine, but if we step through to some planet where we’re worshiped as god emperors, I am not sharing my palace with you.” Aignar pushed his camera probes through the portal, then snapped them back as he stepped forward. “Looks boring.”
Roland followed him through. The inside of the dune was far larger than the exterior. Ivory-colored passageways, all lit from within, stretched into the distance. Oval-shaped gaps in the walls gave the place a membrane-like feeling, as if they were inside something organic.
The only sound was the dull whine of their armors’ actuators and the click of their gauss cannons.
“I’ll mark the interior.” Roland turned around and froze. Behind him was a rounded alcove…and no portal. “Problem. We have a problem.”
“That’s why the other lance hasn’t come out,” Aignar said. “Let’s keep moving. Staying here and feeling sorry for ourselves won’t change anything. Maybe we’ll find the others, have a good laugh about all this.”
One of Roland’s fingers unhinged at a knuckle. He swiped a tag down the wall and marched down the passageway. Through the oval gaps in the walls, none of which were the same size or orientation as the others, Roland saw other tunnels and the occasional empty room.
“You know anything about the Qa’Resh?” Aignar asked.
“I checked their file on the Scipio’s computers on the trip over. Ancient race that organized the alliance against the Xaros. Lived on a city floating in a gas giant…looked like giant crystal jellyfish,” Roland said.
“And they up and vanished after the war, just like the Toth,” Aignar said. “No reason given. Their whole file is pretty sparse reading. Is it me, or is there an information gap about the final days of the Ember War?”
“I’ve noticed that too.” Roland readied his gauss cannons as they passed by a gap in the wall large enough for them to step through. Beyond was an empty white room.
“Why keep it secret?” Aignar asked. “The war’s over. We won. Parades, holidays…no extinction events. What’s the point of hiding information about that victory?”
“Every government has secrets. Military and intelligence information is kept off the grid to keep enemies guessing. Then there are some unsavory reasons: corruption, illegal acts…something shameful or wrong that might shake the people’s trust in their leaders or upset allies.”
“I’d say we’re getting close to tinfoil-hat territory.” Aignar rapped his knuckles against his helm. “But mine is composite graphenium. Maybe we should go back to that room we just saw…that’s now full of portals.”
“What?” Roland turned around. Aignar was right; the white room had three dark portals on the walls.
Aignar tagged the gap between the room and the tunnel and stopped in the middle of the room.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. The middle portal rippled and a hazy image of the structure’s surface appeared. To the left, the spinning sculpture.
Roland watched the right-most portal as shadows played across the surface.
“I’m tempted to go back up top,” Aignar said. “Regroup with Gideon and see if he’s got a better option than us fumbling around in the dark down here.”
“Here.” Roland said and motioned to the third portal. “I think I see someone. It’s weak, but you can pick up the outline.”
The portal showing the art chamber faded to black as the color on the image to the surface drained away.
“We should choose now,” Aignar said.
Roland jumped through the third portal. He fell a few feet and found himself in a roughly spherical chamber. The walls glittering with crystals like he was inside a giant geode. In the center of the room was a woman, her arms outstretched into a golden lattice that floated around her. Her feet floated just above the ground.
She wore a simple robe and had shoulder-length black hair that glistened in the light. She had her back to him, so he couldn’t make out her face. Aignar landed next to him.
“I tried to help,” she said, her voice echoing off the walls. “Tried to send you home…but armor only takes in the brave and the bold.”
Roland aimed his gauss cannons at her and sidestepped around the room. His HUD showed the atmosphere in the room was pure nitrogen…and cold, so cold he could almost feel a chill through his womb.
She spun around slowly, and Roland stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her face. She wore no life-support gear, in an environment that would have killed an unsuited human in minutes. Her skin had a silver sheen to it, and; her face was motionless, doll-like. Her eyes did not blink or move, but he sensed a soul behind her still gaze.
“What are you?” Roland asked. “Some sort of Qa’Resh caretaker?”
She laughed, mocking him, the sound coming through a mouth that didn’t move.
“How quick they forget. All I’ve done for you and Earth and this is my reward. Anonymity.”
“I know that face,” Aignar said.
Roland studied her again, and the chill in his womb foun
d its way to his heart.
Stacey Ibarra.
“By order of the Terran Union,” Roland said, “you are hereby under arrest for treason.”
“Treason? I am the only one trying to save us all, and they have the gall—the audacity—to say I am the traitor?” Stacey asked. “Do you know where we are? What I’m on the cusp of discovering?”
“I don’t care.” Roland took a step toward her.
“Stop,” Ibarra said. The word carried a tone of command so strong that Roland actually obeyed her. He felt his cheeks flush. He, armor, caught short by the word of an unarmed woman.
“They didn’t tell you why I’m here, did they?” she asked. “Tell you what I’m after, why it’s so important. Of course, God forbid you have the chance to make your own decisions. They just let you loose.”
“Why don’t you enlighten us?” Aignar said.
“This is the map room,” she said. “A cartography center of an ancient and powerful race…one that didn’t quite clean up after itself when they decided to move on. I can find one of those toys if you two would just…let…me…finish!”
“What happened to you?” Roland let his gauss cannons angle toward the floor.
She giggled, then, the laugh growing into a cackle that came from a place not rooted in sanity. That she laughed without her chest moving bothered Roland more than anything.
“Our salvation was our destruction,” she said, “and they are our salvation again. How’s that coin flip going to end up? I don’t know, but we’re going to find out. You. Me. Earth. The whole galaxy.”
“Ms. Ibarra, you don’t sound well,” Roland said. “Come with me. Have your fleet surrender and no one else has to get hurt.”
“Is that…a threat?” She cocked her head to one side. “You think I’m afraid of you?”
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” Roland said. “I want this situation between you, your people, and Earth to end.”
“Oh, this situation is about to end.” She raised her chin slightly, then said in a singsong voice, “Nicodemus…time to shine.”
A dark figure jumped through the portal behind Aignar and landed in a crouch. Armor, its surface painted black, looked up at Roland and Aignar. Nicodemus’ helm had a pair of golden wings on the sides, the front was a blank faceplate with red optics glowing in the eye slits.
