The Borrega Test

by James Vincett

  That’s it!

  Kruger smiled. “How big is it?”

  “About two hundred meters is exposed. We can only see part of it, but I compute the diameter to be around a hundred meters.”

  “How thick is the ice on the surface?”

  “About thirty meters.”

  “Blow it away using the laser.”

  “Yes, sir.” Over the next several hours, the crew used the small laser on board the scout ship to chip and boil away the ice, creating a hole with walls of ice. Slowly, a flat surface appeared at the bottom.

  “What the hell is that?” Koff exclaimed. “The laser doesn’t scratch it!”

  “How big is the hole?” Kruger asked.

  “About a hundred meters in diameter and thirty meters deep.”

  “The hole is more than big enough. Land this bucket. I need to get down there to take a closer look.” Kruger stood up and crushed the cigar under the heel of his boot. He pointed at Koff. “You will accompany me.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. The rest of you will stay on board.” While Kruger moved to the aft section of the scout ship, he unbuckled his belt and holster. He donned an EVA suit and strapped the belt back on.

  “What are you bringing that for?” Koff asked as he donned an EVA suit.

  “To keep you in line.” Kruger smiled at Koff’s blanched expression and put on his helmet.

  They stepped into the airlock and Koff cycled out the air. The outer door slid open and Kruger exited the airlock. Ice still covered small areas, but he clearly saw the smooth, gray and featureless surface.

  “What is this?” Koff asked.

  “It’s the top of a shaft that leads deep into the crust of the moon,” Kruger said.

  “Did we build this?”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve see one before. We need to get inside.”

  “How the hell are we going to do that?”

  Kruger pulled out his pockcomp and summoned the schematics of the Anuvi artifact, the same schematics broadcast in a powerful quasi-particle transmission by the artifact itself, and decrypted by Cassandra Urem, the technician on the QBD relay station. Freedman had sent Pederson and Van Zant to retrieve the schematics, kill Urem, and blow the station, all to ensure no one else got the plans detailing the artifact.

  Kruger was still disappointed Freedman hadn’t selected him for that mission.

  He set down the pockcomp and waved his hands to summon a three-dimensional holographic image of the schematic. He stepped back and, using gestures, zoomed into the top of the tower.

  “What the hell is that?” Koff asked.

  “Shut the fuck up. I’m thinking.”

  The holographic image was identical to the surface on which he stood, but it showed six circles on the surface, five around the edge and one in the center. Figures noted the circles around the edge were thirty point two-six meters in diameter, and the circle in the center thirty-nine point six-eight meters in diameter.

  He waved away the image and picked up his pockcomp. “Stay here.” He walked about twenty meters, approaching the center of the exposed surface. He knelt and inspected the surface, but could see no detail at all. He pulled out his pockcomp and projected a weak and pulsing laser light. Sweeping the surface in front of him, the pulsing laser light revealed a fine outline circling the center of the exposed surface. The pockcomp calculated the diameter to be thirty-nine point six-eight meters.

  If you find a good design, you might as well stick with it!

  He stepped back, well away from the edge of the circle, and tapped a key to turn off the laser light. “I need the Molly Mae to transmit a quasi-particle signal, tachyon, at a rate of sixty seven particles per second.”

  “What for? Such a low emissions rate is useless.”

  “Just do it,” Kruger barked.

  Kruger waited for a few minutes, but nothing happened. “Are you transmitting?”

  “Yes! I told you ...”

  The circular center rose to a height of more than thirty meters.

  “What the fuck?” Koff exclaimed.

  As it rose, the column spun clockwise, revealing a huge door. A blue and yellow holographic image moved down the structure on the right side of the portal, stopping a meter and a half above the surface.

  Kruger stepped forward and noticed the image looked like a blue and yellow target. He touched it. Nothing happened for several moments, and then the door slid open. A bright yellow light spilled out of the doorway.

  “Holy shit!” Koff cried.

  “The rest of you suit up,” Kruger said. “We’re all going down.”

  Kruger waited patiently for the five other crew to don EVA suits and exit the scout ship, but felt elated at his discovery. He could finally prove to Pederson that he was more than a butcher.

  He herded the exploration crew through the doorway and stepped inside. The interior was huge, almost forty meters in diameter and thirty meters high. A complicated holographic image moved down the wall on the right side of the door. The image looked like a long thin vertical line with an intersecting horizontal line on the bottom. Moving images, like text, floated to the right of the intersecting line.

  Kruger heard fear in the crew’s babble, but ignored it. He touched the text and the massive door slid shut. Kruger felt an instant of freefall, but it disappeared. After several seconds, the door slid open.

  The light grew slowly, from a dim blue, to a soft yellow, and then finally to a white light.

  “Incredible!” Koff gasped.

  “You can take off your helmets,” Kruger said. He pulled off his own and took a deep breath.

  They walked out into a huge cylindrical chamber, the wall hundreds of meters from the elevator shaft. The chamber had a relatively low ceiling, only a few hundred meters high. The shaft from which they emerged occupied the center of the chamber. Surrounding the elevator stood five other shafts. Huge elevated tracks, each hanging from the ceiling, radiated away from each of the five shafts toward the far wall of the chamber. Smooth, bullet-shaped structures hung from each track, each about thirty meters in diameter and forty meters in length, with a smooth mirror surface. Each of the suspended tracks led to oval doors in the five shafts, on the opposite side of the elevator shaft.

  “Magnetic linear accelerators,” Kruger murmured. He had ridden one of these on the Anuvi artifact to escape its destruction.

  “What?” Koff asked.

  “Nothing. Follow me.”

  About fifty meters from the central shafts Kruger saw a huge block-like piece of machinery extending to the edge of the chamber. The object, constructed of a greenish-silvery metal, had rounded corners and intricate designs set into the surface. He looked around and, in the distance, saw another line of the same machines radiating out from the central shaft.

  The stasis chambers.

  “This is different from Anuvi,” Kruger said. “There’s only one level, and no control room.”

  “You’ve been in one of these before?” Koff asked.

  “Yeah, in the Anuvi system.”

  “What the hell is it?”

  “It’s an artifact built by an ancient alien race. The one in the Anuvi system was sort of a world-ship. The entire moon could move through both normal and hyperspace. This one seems more like a crypt, or a barracks of some sort.”

  “Where’s the power coming from?” one of the other crew asked.

  “Well, the Anuvi artifact was powered by the core of the moon itself. This one is probably the same.”

  “You mean, whoever built this drilled to the core of the moon?” another crewmember asked.

  “I think so.”

  “What are those things?” Koff pointed at the greenish-silvery machinery.

  “Stasis chambers.”

  “What?”

  “Whatever is inside does not experience the passage of time.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “We
ll, what’s inside?”

  “The ancient aliens that built the Anuvi artifact, and this one. Probably.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “We’re gonna be famous! Promotion here I come!”

  “This artifact must be kept secret,” Kruger said. “As far as we know it is the only one of its kind, since the Anuvi artifact was destroyed.”

  “No way! We need to report this discovery to the IES!”

  Kruger pulled his pistol from its holster, raised it, and shot Koff in the head. He killed two more of the Molly Mae’s crew before the last three started to run, but it only took a few minutes to finish them off.

  He looked at the pistol, the same 11-millimeter semi-automatic projectile weapon he had recovered on the Moon, when he explored the old Intelligence Research Installation with Freedman.

  “This is the same firearm Freedman used to kill Tapper,” he said. “Still works like a charm!”

  What was that old expression?

  Dead men don’t tell tales.

  Bandele

  The prison guards led Captain William Osatari Bandele from Shuttle Dock 94 of Admiral von Kármán Station. One of the largest facilities in Union space, the station occupied Earth’s L2 point, on the opposite side of Earth from Sol, one point five million kilometers from the planet itself. The station served as the administrative headquarters for the Imperial Exploration Service and three Imperial Navy fleets.

  After Bandele’s arrest upon his return to Sol System, the Exploration Service turned him over to the Union Security Service. The USS imprisoned Bandele at their own facility at Tyco Crater on the Moon. Here, Bandele remained for months in solitary, only allowed to meet with his lawyers. When his court-martial began, the USS transferred him to the holding cells on Von Kármán, and Bandele remained there during the three-week trial. After the judgment, the USS transferred him back to Tyco for several more weeks.

  Now, with the sentencing hearing scheduled, he was back on Von Kármán.

  Only two guards escorted him, both human; the USS only used robot guards to escort violent offenders. However, the guards still bound Bandele’s wrists and ankles with cuffs and chains, not because he was a physical threat, but to humiliate him. The guards hustled him through the shuttle port lounge, though a staffed security station, and down the long hallway to the temporary holding cells. A guard opened a cell door with a wave of his pockcomp against the wall. One guard stood outside while the other gently pushed Bandele into the cell, removed the cuffs and chains, and then retreated from the cell and closed the door.

  Bandele sat on the narrow cot and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. His tears and frustration spent, he only felt a gnawing hollowness in his chest.

  It’s not fair!

  A year ago, he was the commanding officer of the latest and most sophisticated exploration vessel Humanity had ever built. He had commanded the vessel as it departed von Kármán, the last time he would see this station as a free man. He had spent decades of hard work and sacrificed almost everything to get to that prestigious position. His work was everything to him, and now at the age of sixty-eight he had nothing, no family, no career and no retirement.

  That fucking bitch!

  Bandele would curse the name of Dr. Adrianna Batista for the remainder of his days. He drew some measure of satisfaction from her violent death on the surface of the third moon of Anuvi III, but he still hoped she forever burned in an alien hell somewhere.

  However, he still had to face the truth: the responsibility for the loss of the HSS Vitus Bering was his.

  After the Bering had landed on the moon, he had agreed with Batista that he should perform a reconnaissance of the rest of the Anuvi system to look for any other alien structures, or something that would help explain the massive tower on the moon’s surface. Once the Bering departed the moon, Bandele commanded that they use all sensors to scan the worlds in the system. Flush from the heady experience of the discovery, he didn’t even think of the possibility of an enemy vessel. The chances were astronomical.

  Over the last several months, he played out what happened repeatedly in his mind.

  The sensors seemed to have picked up something interesting on one of the nearby planets, so he ordered the Bering to decelerate in order to increase the time the sensors would sweep the world. Foolishly, he ordered the shields lowered and the power reallocated to increase sensor sensitivity.

  The threat alarm blared.

  “Incoming missile!” Lieutenant Fel cried.

  “Range?”

  “Eighteen seconds to impact!”

  “Electronic countermeasures! Reconfigure the force fields! Target incoming and fire!” Because they were a few thousand kilometers within Anuvi III’s strong gravity field, they couldn’t shunt into hyperspace without great risk.

  The Bering got off two shots at the incoming missile, but missed. Just before the ECM and reconfigured shields came online, the missile exploded about eight kilometers to port. The blast threw Bandele from the command chair and the consoles on the command deck exploded in sparks and fire. Dazed, he only thought of getting to the escape pods, there was no way they could possibly fix the Bering. He quickly checked the vital signs of the other command crew, and found Lieutenant Fel the only one alive. CPO Trik appeared as Bandele dragged the unconscious Lieutenant Fel from the command deck.

  Yes. The deaths of the crew and the loss of the Bering were his fault. He could accept that. During the court-martial, he answered questions truthfully and took responsibility. That is what his father taught him to do.

  What he couldn’t accept was the cover-up. I’m not responsible for taking the Bering into the Neutral Zone!

  During the evidence discovery phase of the court-martial, his lawyers could not find any evidence the Minister for Exploration Hercule Falk had granted Dr. Batista a special operations rank, or had ordered the Bering into the Naati Neutral Zone. Dr. Duchesne, whom Batista had replaced as Chief Scientist, had died from a drug overdose a few weeks before proceedings began, apparently distraught over the premature death of his wife. The prosecution successfully blocked Falk from testifying; given his conviction as a pedophile and sexual deviant, he could not be trusted.

  Bandele was appalled, and then angry, as Vice-Admiral Katherine Collins testified. Bandele’s superior officer, she had signed the order, along with Falk, granting Batista the special operations rank and permission to change the Bering’s itinerary. He had seen the documents with his own eyes, but had lost them with the destruction of the Bering. Collins testified she could not recall Dr. Batista or any special orders issued by Minister Falk. Her executive assistant, Commander Garin, to whom Bandele had spoken about Batista before the Bering departed, testified the same. Bandele’s defense demanded both Collins and Garin be subject to a telepathic investigation, but the panel of officers refused, citing such an investigation would violate the witnesses’ civil rights.

  The only surviving crew, Doctors Ferrel and Beckenbaur, testified to Batista’s meddling, but the prosecution argued they were unreliable witnesses sticking up for a beloved colleague. When Bandele’s defense demanded the court summon naval officer Joshua McFinn, the Imperial Navy refused to comply because of state security. At that point, there was nothing left in his favor but his own exemplary career record. The Bering’s destruction had killed most of the crew, and an investigation of the wreckage was impossible given its location in the Neutral Zone.

  As the court-martial dragged on, Bandele began to realize he was the victim of a conspiracy to cover up the existence of the alien artifact, but even his defense team could not investigate because the moon had crashed into Anuvi III. Someone had to take the fall for the destruction of the Bering, and so the powers responsible had chosen him.

  The panel of officers spent three hours considering the evidence, and convicted him of defying the general order not to enter the Neutral Zone, and gross negligence leading to the destruction of Imperial property
and the deaths of Imperial personnel.

  He lay back on the cot and sighed. He knew he was on suicide watch, but he was too tired to do even that. With another sigh, he drifted off to sleep.

  He woke to a guard shaking his shoulder. He stood, and the guard placed him in cuffs and chains. He emerged from the small cell and the guards escorted him down the hall.

  The courtroom was empty except for Bandele’s lawyers, the prosecution, the new Minister of Exploration, Her Excellency Gabriela Farida Mahdivi, and Vice-Admirals Katherine Collins, Victor Bajnai, and Theresa Horn. One of the guards escorted Bandele to a spot in the middle of the courtroom and withdrew. As Vice-Admiral Bajnai stood, one of Bandele’s lawyers rose.

  “If the court could grant a request on the part of the defendant?”

  “This is unusual, Commander Koenig,” Bajnai replied. “All evidence has been presented, judgment passed, and we are in the sentencing phase.”

  “Just one small mercy, sir. Bandele’s colleagues, the only surviving crew of the Bering, have requested to be present during sentencing. They did testify during the court-martial.”

  “I must object, sir.” The lead prosecutor, Captain Victoria Halsey, stood and spoke. “The proceedings of this court-martial have been placed under strict secrecy by the Crown.”

  Bajnai looked at the Minister, who gave a curt nod.

  “It seems you are overruled, Captain Halsey,” Bajnai said.

  Koening nodded at one of the guards, who walked to the back and unlocked the main door to the courtroom.

  At the sight of Doctors Ferrel and Beckenbaur, Bandele’s eyes filled with tears. Ferrel looked at him with wide eyes, and tried to smile. Beckenbaur wore a grim expression. They took seats near the front of the viewing gallery.

  “May we continue, Commander Koenig?” Bajnai asked.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Bajnai cleared his throat. “We, the committee, have come to a sentence regarding your conviction of violating general orders and gross negligence leading to the destruction of the HSS Vitus Bering and the deaths of a majority of her crew on or about April 27, 2633. Do you have any questions or concerns about the process of this sentencing hearing?”