by S. H. Jucha
“Why do you think that is?” Jessie asked.
Aurelia blinked twice at Jessie. The question surprised her. Since she joined the crew of the Annie, she had followed one order after another. Only the rover crew had asked her opinion about anything. She relaxed, breathing slowly, and closed her eyes. It was how she calmed herself when she became frustrated with her imprisonment in the governor’s house. She replayed the sensations from the initial detection through the days until they reached the site.
Jessie watched Aurelia relax. The baseline warmth he felt in her presence disappeared, as her breathing slowed. Always on, he thought of her power. Suddenly, Aurelia’s eyes popped open.
“What?” Jessie asked.
“That power resonation is tuned to soothe the aliens who built it,” Aurelia said, energized by the realization. “I don’t know if they were sensitives, but they must have been able to feel it somehow. Once you get away from the site, Triton’s surface must disturb the resonance. Hamoi continually talked about the way sound waves penetrate various substrata differently.”
“You’re learning about geology from Hamoi?” Jessie asked.
“I’m learning from everyone, Captain. People like to teach me.”
“And you reciprocate.”
“It’s only polite. It’s not like it costs me anything to make my power,” Aurelia replied, shrugging her shoulders.
You’re right, Yohlin. An exceptionally generous young girl, Jessie thought. “Interesting theory about the power source’s resonance. When we return, I want you to pay close attention to when the power shifts to a pleasant sensation. I want it marked where and when it happens. Copy?”
“Understood, Captain.”
“Dismissed, spacer.”
Aurelia jumped up, flashed a bright smile, and Jessie was flooded with a delicious combination of sensations, as the teenager exited. On the one hand, he was disturbed by its unrequested distribution, as he saw it; and, on the other hand, he had to admit it was a heady experience.
* * *
“We’re down, Captain,” the Annie’s shuttle pilot called to Jessie. The captain and crew were wearing vac suits. They donned their helmets, activated systems, and waited for the suits’ responses.
Jessie looked around and everyone gave him a thumbs-up. “Let’s unload,” he ordered.
Darrin hit the ramp actuator, and the shuttle’s main cabin was cycled to vacuum. When complete, the ramp lowered and Tully backed the six-seat search rover off the shuttle onto Triton’s surface.
They’d landed near the shelter, and crew set about breaking it down. Within two hours, the shuttle’s cabin was completely filled with the shelter and its equipment, and the pilot was lifting and heading for a site about 5 kilometers from the alien construction. Jessie and the exploration team climbed into the rover and headed for the same destination.
By the time the rover made the new base camp site, the crew was completing the setup operation. Jessie’s team pitched in to help, and, soon after, the shuttle was lifting, taking the excess crew members to the Annie.
Jessie didn’t waste any time. His crew swapped out their tanks and left them behind to be charged. Then, loaded with fresh tanks, they engaged the rover and headed for the site.
“Here, Captain,” Aurelia called out from the rear seat, when they were near the site, and Jessie ordered Tully to stop.
“What’s up, Captain?” Darrin asked.
“Tully, mark this exact position in the nav.”
“Got it, sir.”
“How far to the small overlook where you planted the cam?”
“It’s about two hundred eighty-five meters, Captain.”
Jessie glanced back at Aurelia, and she grinned, as if she’d won an award.
“To answer your question, Darrin, Aurelia has a theory about the shift in the perceived resonance of the power source. She’s just pinpointed the location where the ground geology ceases to disturb the signal and it smooths out.”
Hamoi eyed Aurelia, held out a hand, and she smacked it.
“Why is this important, Captain?” Belinda asked.
“I have no idea, Belinda,” Jessie replied. “I’m treating the discovery of this site like it’s a giant puzzle. Every piece of information we collect adds to the final picture.”
“And what do you hope that image will be?” Darrin asked.
“Let me ask all of you a rhetorical question. In another ninety to one hundred years, how do you envision Pyrean society … scraping along or sailing to the stars? The technology embedded in this site might possess the keys that will make possible the latter path.”
Tully glanced over at Jessie, who was seated next to him, and Jessie hand-signaled forward.
Jessie noticed that the previous tracks out and back that Tully had been unerringly following led directly toward a cut in a tall outcrop.
“Straight at it, Captain, like she was tuned into a homing beacon,” Tully commented, when he saw Jessie look back at their tracks and compare them to the forward view.
Tully stopped the rover just below the cut. “Do you want me to take it through, Captain?”
Footprints marked the trek up and through the cut, but the rover hadn’t gone that way. “No, we’ll leave it here,” Jessie replied.
Everyone was ready for the word to get started, but Jessie sat quietly in the front seat.
“Anything wrong, Captain?” Darrin asked.
“No, Darrin, thinking is all. I was wondering how the aliens entered and left this place.”
“We’ve only examined the site from the one side, the overlook, Captain,” Belinda replied. “For all we know, there’s an exit on the other side that leads to a landing pad or some other alien construction.”
“Hmm,” Jessie mused.
“Something else, Captain?” Tully asked.
“Darrin, Tully, you two are engineers. If you were told to build an incredible power system below the ground that was to last for centuries or more, and you had your choice of Pyre’s three moons, which would you choose?”
“Definitely not Emperion, Captain,” Darrin replied quickly.
“Definitely not that slush ball, as profitable as it is for us,” Tully echoed.
“And probably not Minist,” Darrin said.
“Agreed, Captain. Too much tidal action, due to its proximity to Pyre,” Tully added.
“Which leaves Triton,” Jessie said.
“I wouldn’t phrase it that way, Captain,” Darrin said. “Triton is an excellent build site. Based on the survey work we’ve conducted, this is a solid aggregate world. It’s dense and stable.”
“Okay, that answers why here for their underground power installation. Let’s go see if we can discover any more pieces of our puzzle,” Jessie replied. “Move out.”
The team exited the rover and trudged up the cut. They stood in the same footprints, as when the group first saw the site.
“Listen carefully, everyone,” Jessie said, drawing his team’s attention. “I know we’re anxious to check out something that’s caught our eye. Feel free to examine whatever catches your attention. Record it visually. But do not touch anything. Do I make myself clear?”
The acknowledgments were audibly clear.
“Have at it, team. Be careful,” Jessie said.
The crew walked down to the outer ring. The two engineers and tech stepped over it and made straight for the instrument package, the long console, while Hamoi was interested in the platform.
Jessie stood outside the ring. It was his first time at the site, and he was interested in taking in the entire structure, trying to grasp the big picture, asking himself: Why did they build it here? What did they do with it? Why was it open to vacuum?
Of all the possible things to examine, Belinda walked toward one of the small rocky outcrops. They were the oddities that Jessie had asked Yohlin about. Jessie noted with satisfaction that Aurelia followed at Belinda’s shoulder.
“We could use something to fan the dust off t
his panel, Captain, if you’ll allow it,” Darrin called over the suit comm.
“Not now,” Jessie replied. “We don’t disturb anything.”
“I think it’s going to disturb us, Captain,” Belinda said, her voice shaky. She was on her hands and knees at the far side of the nearest, small outcropping, her helmet close to the structure. “You need to come here, Captain.”
There was urgency in Belinda’s voice that galvanized everyone to move quickly to her location. Jessie picked up Aurelia’s wide-eyed stare through her faceplate, as he came close. Belinda’s side of the small pile of rocks was in shadow, and Jessie ordered his suit lights on, as he knelt.
What Jessie saw was the last thing he expected to find. A small figure in a vac suit was tightly curled and covered in a thick layer of dust. The team could make out a head and portions of an arm and hand. It appeared as if the figure was trying to emerge from the ground.
“Well, this moon finally makes sense,” Darrin said. “Not necessarily finding that,” he added, pointing at the figure. “It’s that big crater that’s been bothering me ever since we first investigated it. I told Captain Erring it was strange. Then we find this place. On top of that, we find a body. You might ask how come the aliens didn’t recover their comrade.”
“Okay, I’m asking,” Jessie said.
“This moon was the site of some sort of conflict,” Darrin replied.
“The crater’s edges,” Hamoi remarked. “They were cut, jagged, torn from the inside.”
“Exactly,” Darrin said. “That crater was exploded outward. Either it was drilled and the charge planted or something extremely powerful was down there, and it detonated.”
“Why does that explain this?” Jessie asked, swinging an arm across the width of the site.
“There’s too much soft dust over this moon,” Darrin replied. “The aggregate is compact … the stuff that formed this satellite. The core samples have this odd layer of top dust and then heavy rock. The lines are pretty distinct, and it’s been consistent across this moon.”
Jessie’s forehead furrowed in a frown. “Let me get this straight. Your theory is that during this supposed conflict, a huge crater was blown and, over time, most of the debris was pulled down by Triton’s gravity to cover the surface in a heavy layer of dust and rubble.”
“That makes sense,” Hamoi added, while Tully was nodding his head in agreement.
“That leaves the nasty question of who was this guy fighting with … his own people?”
“Don’t think so, Captain,” Aurelia replied. She was kneeling in front of another shallow outcropping.
The team hurried to her side, and Aurelia made room for Jessie. The faceplate of a suited figure was broken and the helmet was partially filled with dust, but Jessie could make out the faint outline of formidable teeth. He stood and stepped back, so others could get a look. The first thing that Jessie noted was the second figure was considerably longer and heavier than the first one.
“Okay, we have two alien types,” Belinda said, “but does that mean they were fighting? Couldn’t it have been an accident? Maybe, it was a sort of power unit that blew, taking out that crater?”
“I’ve been thinking about what Darrin proposed,” Hamoi said. “Our samples from the crater face were thorough. There was nothing from the assay tests or the mass spectrometer readings, which returned a report of an unknown substance like this ring tested out, and nothing came back as unexpected. I don’t think a structure blew up from the bottom of that crater, and I don’t think it was drilled to plant a weapon deep belowground.”
“Which leaves what?” Jessie asked.
“Well, we’re obviously looking at aliens, who could build this odd thing out here on a moon and put a power plant in the ground that hums invitingly when close,” Hamoi replied, nodding toward Aurelia. “I think that we have to stop thinking about this place from the normal human frame of mind.”
Hamoi found himself the center of everyone’s quizzical expressions, the lights in their helmets highlighting their quirked eyebrows and odd twists of lips. “I’m just saying that these aliens can do stuff we can’t,” Hamoi persisted. “Who says that during this skirmish, someone couldn’t have fired a weapon from a ship that blew out the crater, a weapon based on a laser or a beam of some type?”
“Point taken, Hamoi,” Jessie acknowledged. “Before this gets any weirder, I want a body count. Everyone spread out from this one. It’s number one of the large version.”
“What if we find a third or fourth type, Captain?” Aurelia asked.
“Record what you see, and we’ll change the count, as we go,” Jessie replied.
The team fanned out and bent down to study every small rocky ledge. Each was the body of an alien. After some puzzling and a little consultation among team members, it was determined that there were only two types of aliens. The count was six small bodies and thirteen large bodies.
“Now what, Captain?” Darrin asked.
“Back to the rover and the shelter,” Jessie replied. “The tanks are approaching the safety limits, and it’s been a long day. Plus, I need time to think.”
The team climbed up through the cut to the rover parked beyond. Not a word was exchanged. The desiccated remains of the aliens were foremost in everyone’s minds. The thought that there had been a fight between species was even more unnerving, considering that these were technologically advanced creatures, which begged the question as to how humans could compete with them.
The silence continued through the trip to the shelter. The Annie’s crew was excited to see the rover return and was anxious for news. But, as they regarded the faces of the search team, once helmets were removed, they kept their questions to themselves and hurried to help the team strip out of their vac suits.
“Hamoi, collect the images and upload them to the Annie and the Spryte. Mark them private for Captain Erring and Ituau.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Hamoi replied. He grabbed his comm unit, which he plugged into the suits to offload their stored images.
“The ships are on second watch, Captain,” Darrin said, indicating that Captain Erring and Ituau would be in bed.
“Those two are probably wondering why in the name of Pyre I haven’t called and updated them. Watch,” Jessie replied.
“Captain Cinders calling the Annie for Captain Erring,” Jessie said into his comm unit. He left it on speaker. There wasn’t much to keep secret from the downside crew.
“Captain Erring here,” replied Yohlin, and Darrin received a quirk of Jessie’s lips.
“Please link this call with Ituau, Captain,” Jessie requested. A moment later, Ituau’s voice acknowledged that she was on the call.
“The two of you are on speaker with the entire downside team,” Jessie said. When Hamoi signaled the images had been uploaded, Jessie added, “You’re receiving imagery marked for your attention. Please start reviewing them.”
After a few minutes, Ituau asked. “Captain, are we looking at bodies?”
“Two types of bodies,” Yohlin quickly added.
“That’s what we’ve found,” Jessie replied. “Now, here’s the good part. It’s the engineering team’s consideration that the crater was formed by some type of weapon or device that exploded and left no residual matter behind. It threw a huge amount of dust and debris into the space around Triton, which eventually was pulled down to the surface and covered these bodies, after some sort of fight that destroyed the site we’re investigating.”
Jessie looked at the faces of the two shelter techs, who had been examining the photos on Hamoi’s comm unit. They were staring at him in astonishment with slack mouths.
“Did you touch or move the bodies, Captain?” Yohlin asked.
“Negative,” Jessie replied. “But I don’t think it matters.”
“I don’t follow,” Yohlin replied.
“We’ve been quarantined for six months, Captain. What’s going to happen, if and when I report we’ve found alien bodies?”<
br />
“The powers-that-be will probably make our quarantine permanent,” replied Ituau, the disgust evident in her voice.
“I’m not sure that wouldn’t be a wise decision on their part,” Yohlin said.
“Unfortunately, I can’t disagree with you, Captain,” Jessie replied. “This has gotten way too complicated for a bunch of miners. But, I know one thing, if I know anything, and that’s this bunch of miners is not going to end up like those aliens because some people are afraid of contamination.”
“Even if the threat is real?” Yohlin asked.
“I didn’t say we’d risk transferring our exposure to the population, Captain,” Jessie replied, an edge in his voice. “One way or the other, I’m going to get us help, while we wait out our quarantine time.”
“What’s next, Captain?” Ituau asked.
“Food and sleep,” Jessie replied.
“And tomorrow?” Yohlin asked.
“Don’t know about tomorrow yet, Captain. I need to think on it. Cinders out,” Jessie said, thumbing off his comm unit. He stretched out on his cot, and the two shelter techs hurried to make hot meals for the search team, delivering juice containers and meal packets to each of them. One of the techs caught Darrin’s eye and nodded at Jessie, who rested with a forearm over his eyes, and Darrin shook his head.
“So, who was here and who came here?” Jessie said quietly, without uncovering his face.
“You’re supposing one of these species was resident on Pyre,” Belinda replied. “Could they have lived on a planet that was more volcanically active than it is now? It’s taken almost three hundred years for the air quality to improve by forty percent. What would it have been like before that time, when they would have been downside?”
“Think about it, Belinda,” said Darrin. “We have an incredible alien site with a power system still active, a crater that appears to have been exploded by an unknown weapon type, and a planet in a state of eruption that’s slowly subsidizing.”
