Tyra looked over at him. “At these temperatures the ice is as hard as rock,” she explained.
Lucien nodded slowly, as if he understood how that was possible. Black sand skrished under his feet, glittering in the pale yellow-orange light.
“Then what’s the sand?” he asked. Normal sand was made of grains of silicate rock that had been filed away by weather and water, but if these rocks weren’t rocks, then…
“The sand is hydrocarbon precipitation from the atmosphere,” Tyra said.
That sounded vague enough that it could be just about anything. Humans were hydrocarbons, so for all they knew they could be kicking around the ashes of some long-dead alien civilization.
Just so long as they’re not Faro ashes, Lucien thought. His skin prickled with goosebumps at the memory of those blue-skinned aliens. He felt an urgent need to turn around, to make sure nothing was creeping up behind him.
Listening to those instincts, he casually turned around, but he couldn’t see anything behind him, or anyone—just an impenetrable wall of orange mist. Even the shuttle had vanished into this planet’s murky atmosphere. Turning back to the fore, he realized he couldn’t even see Tyra anymore. The comms were disturbingly silent, too.
Panic gripped him, and his heart thudded in his chest. His breath reverberated loud and uneven inside his helmet, fogging the faceplate faster than the suit heater could clear it.
Drawing on his training, Lucien pushed down those feelings and activated a sensor overlay to pinpoint the others’ locations on his ARCs. Green-shaded outlines appeared, less than a dozen meters away, visible even through the murky atmosphere. But he still couldn’t hear them.
Then he thought to check his comms settings. He was still on the command channel. As soon as he switched to the away team’s channel, comms chatter immediately flooded his ears.
Relief washed through him, and Lucien’s heart resumed its normal pace. He chided himself for being so easily scared. He must have been more shaken by their encounter with the Faros than he realized.
Lucien headed toward the others, and they came swirling out of the murky haze. Tyra and Garek were busy setting up the shuttle’s drill, while Addy stood guarding the site. He walked over to her.
“Hey, Triple S,” he said.
Addy didn’t immediately reply, having apparently forgotten her nickname, but she turned to him as he approached.
“You like long walks on the beach?” he asked, grinning at her. He saw her smile back through her foggy faceplate.
“Do I ever,” she said. “Captain, do you mind if we…?”
“Go ahead. Make sure you get some samples of the ocean water for me. There’s sample containers in that storage crate over there—” Tyra pointed to it. “Find one that’s marked for liquids.”
“Got it,” Lucien said, already on his way to the crate. He grabbed one of the sample containers, a flask marked with an L for liquids, and clipped it to his belt before walking off with Addy.
She grabbed his hand, and he shot her a bemused look.
“Something on your mind, Lucien?” she asked.
“No… well, all right, yes. You and Garek…”
“Just friends.”
“And Tinker?”
“The same.”
“And us?”
“Are you asking me, or telling me?” Addy replied. “You’re the one who turned me down, remember?”
“That’s because all you were offering was sex.”
Addy’s arm stiffened. “I’m sorry you misunderstood.”
“I did?” Lucien asked.
They reached the edge of the water and stood staring out over it—all twelve feet of it that they could see.
“Not big on views, this Snowflake of yours,” Addy said.
“No,” Lucien agreed.
“And yes, you misunderstood, you dumb… man.”
Lucien’s eyebrows shot up, but he waited for her to explain.
“Don’t look so surprised!” Addy said, punching his armored arm with her armored fist. His haptic sensors relayed the contact as a strong jolt.
“I’m sorry if I misjudged you,” Lucien said. “But you have to admit, you are pretty aggressive. You flirt with everyone.”
“That’s just how I am. I’m friendly.”
A little too friendly, maybe, Lucien thought, but didn’t say. “All right, let’s start over. Next time you try to sidle me away from the others, I won’t resist.”
“Maybe this time you should sidle me off.”
“What do you think I’m doing now?” Lucien asked.
Addy smiled again. “You have me there. What about you and the Tyrant?”
“What about her?” Lucien asked, surprised by the question.
“You’re not interested in her?” Addy asked.
“No.” He chuckled dryly. “Definitely not. Why would you think that?”
“The way you two get on each other’s nerves all the time, it seems like there’s enough sexual tension and repressed heat between the two of you to melt the ground we’re standing on.”
“That’s just regular old tension,” Lucien said.
“All right,” Addy replied, nodding. “Good. You still want to go for that swim?”
Lucien eyed the water dubiously. Small waves of methane rippled the surface and lapped the sandy shore. The water was surprisingly calm for an ocean. “From what I’ve heard, we’ll sink,” Lucien replied.
“You want to go for a sink, then?” Addy pressed.
Lucien laughed. “Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? Why not. Let’s see what’s on the ocean floor.”
They walked out together. The water felt surprisingly wet via their haptic sensors—so much so that Lucien had to double check his suit pressure to make sure that he hadn’t actually sprung a leak.
“The bottom’s sandy,” Addy said.
Lucien nodded and peered down through the rippled, perfectly transparent methane. It wasn’t cloudy with churned-up sediment and organic matter. In fact, it was easier to see through the methane than it was to see through the planet’s atmosphere.
They walked out up to their chests before Lucien stopped and glanced back the way they’d come. He could see Tyra and Garek on his sensor overlay as distant green-shaded specks, but he couldn’t see the shoreline anymore.
“We should go back,” he said.
“Come on, we’ve barely gotten our feet wet!” Addy said. “We’ve got enough oxygen to last hours, and our suits are hermetically sealed. What’s the worst that could happen? It gets too dark to see anything and we go back. You’d rather sit around watching the Tyrant drill holes in the ice?”
Lucien frowned. “I guess not.”
They kept going. As their heads slipped under the water, suddenly everything snapped into focus. They could finally see. The ocean floor undulated away from them in rippling waves of black sand. White ice rocks lay scattered here and there, and in the distance… a dark, jagged edge appeared where the ocean floor suddenly dropped away in an undersea cliff.
“Let’s check that out!” Addy said, pointing to the cliff. She ran in a slow-motion, bouncing gait produced by a combination of the planet’s light gravity and the moderately buoyant liquid methane.
“Wait up!” Lucien called after her.
They reached the cliff together, but Addy’s momentum carried her right over it. She called out in alarm, but Lucien managed to grab her arm and pull her back up.
“You all right?” he asked.
She nodded, and they took a moment to catch their breath. It was impossible to see the bottom of the cliff with so little visible light. Lucien snapped on his headlamps. Because the water was so clear, there was nothing to refract the light, and their visibility increased a hundred-fold.
“There’s the bottom!” Addy said, turning on her headlamps, too.
“It’s at least fifty meters down,” Lucien said. “Fifty-two,” he amended after a glance at his range-finder.
“We should
go down and take a look. Maybe there’s some kind of cave to explore? We might find life before Tyra does!”
Lucien had to catch Addy’s arm again to stop her from leaping off the cliff. “We don’t know what’s down there.”
“That’s kind of the point of exploring…” Addy replied. “Scared we’ll run into a sea monster?”
That lives in a methane ocean? Not likely. “All right, but we’d better keep an eye on the time. We had four hours to explore when we left the galleon, and it’s already been… an hour and twenty minutes,” Lucien said as he checked the time on his ARCs. “We’ve got two hours and forty minutes left. That gives us a maximum of another hour and twenty minutes to explore or else we won’t be able to get back to the shuttle in time to leave.”
“Aye aye, Commander.” Addy grabbed his hand and leapt over the cliff, pulling him over with her.
Lucien turned as they drifted down to see that the cliff was made up of distinct layers, each one marked by a dark band of hydrocarbon sand, followed by a white band of ice.
They fell past the cliff at an ever-increasing rate, picking up a surprising amount of speed as they approached the bottom.
They fired their grav boosters to slow down, but when they touched down, they still kicked up giant glittering clouds of black sand. Lucien looked up and felt suddenly very small standing at the base of the sheer, icy cliffs. His headlamps revealed a dim, rippled ceiling far above them—the surface of the ocean.
“Now what?” Lucien asked as he lowered his gaze to scan the ocean floor. “All I see is more of the same.”
“Over there,” Addy said, pointing down the line of cliffs. “Three hundred meters. There’s a cave entrance.” She turned to him with a grin. “What did I tell you?”
They headed for the cave. It was slow going, but they eventually made it. Tyra checked in with them on the comms along the way, and Lucien filled her in on their exploration plans. She told them to be careful, and reminded him about the methane sample, which he promised to take before they came back.
Looking into the cave from the entrance, they found that it was the beginning of a long icy tunnel, cylindrical and smooth, that descended sharply into the frozen crust of the world.
“Where do you think it goes?” Addy asked wonderingly.
“I’m not sure I want to find out,” Lucien replied.
“Really? You’re not the least bit curious?”
Lucien arched an eyebrow at her. “What I find curious is that you are so curious. Let me guess, one of your hobbies on New Earth was spelunking?”
“Among other things. I also like level-jumping and grav racing.”
“Level-jumping…” Lucien replied slowly.
“You know, where you jump from Level One to the ground with nothing but goggles and grav boosters,” Addy explained.
“I know what it is. I’m just surprised that you’re such a risk-taker.”
“I’m surprised that you’re not,” Addy countered. “Isn’t that what this mission is all about? It’s one big free-fall through space to the cosmic horizon.”
Lucien snorted. “I guess. So that’s the reason you came? For the thrill?”
“One of the reasons,” Addy said, turning away from him. “So, are you coming with me, or am I exploring this cave on my own?”
“I guess we can explore a little more,” he said, checking the time again.
The sandy bottom didn’t extend very far into the cave. As the sand disappeared, the icy floor became so slick that they had to reverse the polarity of their grav boosters and dial them up over 1.5 Gs before they could walk without slipping. Even then, they had to grab the walls for support.
“What other reasons did you have for joining the mission?” Lucien asked, as they descended into the cave.
Addy didn’t answer immediately, so he went on, “After the meeting in the Captain’s Ready Room, you said that we’re all products of our past. Did something happen in yours to make you want to leave everything behind?”
“Leave everything behind?” Addy echoed. “I didn’t have anything to leave.”
“What about family? Friends? A boyfriend?” Lucien asked.
“I had a couple of friends,” Addy replied. “Not very close, but that’s probably my fault. I have a habit of pushing people away.”
“No family? You’re an orphan? How’s that possible?”
“Not technically an orphan, no. When I graduated and became a champion, my parents decided to go to Etheria.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Lucien said.
Addy shrugged. “I’m used to it. They weren’t the first people to leave me. My best friend decided to go to Etheria when I was fourteen. He wanted me to go with him. I wanted him to stay, but he wouldn’t stay for me. It sounds stupid now, but we were in love, and I was going to marry that stupid skriff someday. I guess it is stupid….”
“No, it’s not,” Lucien said. “You lost the people that mattered most to you. They’re not dead, but it still hurts.”
“They may as well be dead,” Addy replied.
“Did you ever go visit any of them?”
“My parents sent for me once or twice, but I refused to go. It’s a long trip,” she explained. “I couldn’t spare the time from my studies.”
“I have a half-brother living in Etheria with his wife and kids. It is hard to visit. I’ve also only seen him a few times, but that shouldn’t stop you from going.”
“They were the ones who left me,” Addy replied. “Maybe they should have thought about the consequences of that before they left.”
Hearing the bitterness in Addy’s voice, Lucien hesitated before giving a reply. This was obviously an emotionally charged topic for her. “They didn’t leave because of you,” he said quietly. “They must have had plenty of good reasons for leaving. New Earth isn’t exactly a paradise.”
“And Etheria is? Etherians get to know everything, they always do the right thing, and they’re all equally wealthy. Where’s the fun in that? There’s no reason to explore, or strive, or struggle.”
“I’m pretty sure Etherus still lets them go spelunking and free-falling through planetary atmospheres if they want to,” Lucien said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Addy said. “But what about real adventure? Exploring the unknown? If they want to know what they’ll find at some distant star, or even at the cosmic horizon, he’ll just tell them, and they won’t even have to make the trip.”
“So you’re basically making the opposite of Tyra’s argument. You’re saying it would be a bad thing if Etherus told us everything He knows.”
Addy snorted. “She doesn’t know what she’s asking for. None of the clerics do. You ever read a book?”
“Sure,” Lucien said.
“A fictional one, for fun. Not a textbook.”
“A couple.”
“Well, the next time you do, try reading the ending first,” Addy said.
“Why would I do that?”
“Exactly,” Addy said.
Lucien nodded slowly. “I think I get it. You’re saying the unknown is what makes life interesting and telling us everything we want to know would spoil that.”
“Exactly. Ever wonder why the Etherians never leave Etheria?”
Lucien hadn’t thought about it. He’d never seen an Etherian outside of Etheria except for Etherus. Maybe they weren’t allowed to travel, or maybe there was no point to Etherians traveling beyond their galaxy if they already knew what they’d find.
They came to a fork in the cave, and Addy stopped walking. “Left or right?” she asked, sweeping her headlamps from side to side.
“Do you read the endings of books first?” Lucien asked.
“Of course not,” Addy replied.
“But you could, if you wanted to.”
“Why would I?”
“I think it’s the same thing. Just because Etherians can ask Etherus to reveal every mystery in the universe doesn’t mean that they do or that He does, and just because everyone there
has a good quality of life, doesn’t mean that they don’t have to work or strive. Etherians are not human, and they’re not driven by selfish desires. They think differently than we do. Their work isn’t about getting rich and gaining an advantage over their peers, it’s about accomplishing things. Look at ants, they work hard, but they can’t get rich by doing so.”
Addy regarded him with a frown. “Sounds like maybe you should go to Etheria. If that’s how you think, then what are you doing here? Why did you join the mission, Lucien?”
He didn’t have a chance to reply. A new voice joined their conversation, rippling through the comm speakers inside their helmets.
“Yes, why did you join the mission, Lucien?”
For a moment he thought it was Garek, but this voice was not gruff and gravelly like Garek’s—it was silky and smooth.
Lucien whirled around, his headlamps peeling back the darkness inside the cave.
“I know that voice…” Addy said with a tremor in her voice. She swept her headlamps around, looking for the source.
“I’m glad to hear it,” the voice went on. “I’d be insulted if you’d forgotten me already.”
“How is he on our comms?” Addy demanded.
“Must have hacked the encryption,” Lucien said. He changed channel to speak with the others back at the shuttle. “Tyra, we’ve got company!”
No reply.
“She’s busy,” the voice intoned. “You’ll have to call back later.”
A tall blue-skinned humanoid with a luminous gold crown and flowing gray robes came striding up the tunnel on the left. He wasn’t wearing a pressure suit or any armor despite the frigid methane swirling all around him.
Before either Lucien or Addy could react, another Faro came striding up the tunnel to their right, also without a pressure suit or any substantial armor. This one didn’t wear a crown on his bald blue head, and his robes were black with glowing silver arm bands, claws, and gauntlets.
Both Faros slowly drew shimmering transparent swords from scabbards on their backs.
Lucien flicked an urgent glance at Addy. He didn’t need to say it, but he did anyway—
“Run!”
Dark Space Universe by Jasper T. Scott Page 15
