Starfighter Down

by M. G. Herron

  So Hedrick followed the glow around the corner and was pleasantly surprised to see that the rocks here did emit an ambient light that seemed to come from no source in particular. It wasn’t green, necessarily, so much as white light reflecting an undertone in the walls of the cave, which had narrowed to a passage only big enough for three people to walk abreast.

  Now there was no doubt in his mind. This was not a natural occurrence, but a man-made formation. Excited, Hedrick picked up his pace and continued to follow the twisting, wavy lines of gold flakes, like an unbroken chain. He soon came to a dead end, where the gold chain twisted into an arched frame about the size of a doorway. Atop the arch sat a golden pattern of flakes that reminded him of a crown, like something the Emperor might wear.

  Hedrick ran his fingers along the frame—smooth gold spots bordered by rough granite ridges—he could tell that there had once been intricate carvings here, but the ridges had been worn smooth by time.

  Up close, the pattern made no sense. Only when he stepped back and took in the whole design did the impression of objects solidify. He saw now how the crown was made of five round points, like gems set into the rock itself.

  The same five-pointed pattern had been repeated in the center of the frame. Hedrick reached out and tried to place his fingertips in the five indentations, but his hands weren’t big enough. Whoever’s hand this pattern fit was much larger than his.

  Using three fingers from his left hand, plus a thumb and pinky from his right, Hedrick finally fit his fingers into each of the five indentations, imitating the crown shape. As he held the shape, Hedrick felt resistance, a spongy softness, and finally the stone gave way to mist, revealing a chamber beyond.

  Hedrick stumbled forward and fell to his knees. When he raised his eyes, they bulged from his head at the same moment his breath hitched in his chest.

  That hadn’t been natural. No way, no how. The stone had just vanished! And this…

  Any concern he’d felt, however brief, at falling through the gilded doorway vanished as he took in the glittering chamber.

  The walls here glowed brighter than the hallway he’d just come through. And here, glowing green orbs were set into each of the three corners of the room, a triangular hall that slowly tapered to a point at the far end, directly opposite the doorway Hedrick had come through.

  Bordering the room at the highest point were intricate engravings. People with the heads of animals, animals in the shape of ships, and ships in shapes he couldn’t be sure weren’t animals or people.

  He saw giant gates orbiting stars and a great, powerfully built warrior armed with a staff. One mural that drew his eye was carved of ebony and opal, and depicted a procession of planets culminating in a star, and around the star gathered some kind of fleet. The Kryl! Panic gripped Hedrick’s throat. There was another fleet—or maybe an army was a more accurate term—on a similar mural in opposite colors, black-on-white. Only not black or white at all, but shifting colors that changed depending on the angle, like quartz crystals.

  Dozens more carvings lined the floor and middle sections—mathematical equations, fantastical creations, ritual sacrifices, anatomical drawings of trees… of all things, trees?

  ”What is this place?” His voice echoed loudly enough to make him flinch.

  At the far end of the room, near the tip of the spear that this chamber formed, there was a dais. And atop this dais, remarkably, a geode.

  “Yujene is going to be so jealous when I tell him about this.”

  It took twice as many paces to reach the geode as he expected. Some kind of optical illusion? But soon he did reach it, a perfectly round stone riddled with cracks that turned at right angles, almost like the circuit board for a robot he’d seen once. The same glow that lit the chamber shone through the cracks in the stone, but brighter, making it seem like a giant glowing puzzle ball.

  Propping up the strange geode was one of two pairs of massive hands—the biggest hands he’d ever seen. They dwarfed his hands and would probably make even Elya’s hands look like they belonged to a child. Both pairs of hands—one holding the geode, the other empty—were cupped as if they were meant to hold something, like you might cup your hands under a spout of water to catch it, as Hedrick had done earlier. Perhaps the empty set was meant to hold an object of some kind, too? Another one of these glowing geode puzzles?

  He was dying to locate the source of that green light. Yujene had taught him how these rocks often hid such beauty inside. Hedrick reached out to touch the geode and hesitated. He almost didn’t want to. He was worried it was booby-trapped. That’s what always happened to the starship wreck divers in his favorite holovids. But it was just a geode…

  Or was it? Every kid in the Solaran Empire grew up hearing stories of ancient myth and legend. Most of those stories took place during the Great Migration. The one his mother liked to tell best was of men meeting The Spirit of Old Earth at the edge of a black hole, and being guided to Ariadne, which became the first colony world the Solarans settled and the seat of the new Solaran Empire. Other stories told of magical healings, of technological feats of wonder, of encounters with mysterious, super-advanced xenos known as the Telos.

  Something about this room and the geode made him think of those stories. And of legends from Old Earth, too—the ancient Egyptians and their pyramids, the Americans and their great cities filled with skyscrapers. The Americans, in particular, were said to have created some particularly gruesome and horrific machines, bots that came to life and turned on their slave driving masters…

  But how could any of those ancient powers be responsible for this artifact? How would they have gotten to Robichar when this was supposed to be the first colonization effort this small forest moon had ever undergone?

  So many questions without answers.

  The glowing green light within the orb seemed to pulse, calling him. It reminded him of Hedgebot, the way it seemed to brighten and dim, although the two were nothing alike otherwise. Before his fear crept back in, Hedrick reached out his hand and lifted the geode from the gigantic cupped hands.

  He tensed, waiting for the whole cave to shake and fall in on top of him, or for some kind of spirit to wake in anger. Animus was known to be vengeful, to punish misbehaving children… his mother liked to tell him those stories, too.

  But nothing happened. Then the orb’s weight shifted—up, lifting from his hands into the air.

  The orb exploded in slow motion, separating into its constituent pieces along the lines of its cracks. It expanded over his head and spread throughout the long, triangular room. As Hedrick studied the pieces, he realized with a sudden intuition that each piece of the orb must represent a planet. The source of the glow at the orb’s center was a star—no, several stars. The “planets” rotated around the stars, forming several star systems. A quick count revealed at least ten before the whole arrangement began to spin slowly around the room.

  Hedrick had seen a starmap in a hologram before he came to Robichar. He didn’t recognize any planet or star system from that map. Whatever this map depicted, it wasn’t the Imperial galaxy he was used to seeing.

  He gaped open-mouthed at the starmap above him as it danced through the air. He wished Elya were here. He’d only known the pilot for a day but he just knew Elya would have loved this, would have marveled and wowed along with him. And he’d bet Elya knew more about star systems and maps of the galaxy than he did.

  For the first time in his life, Hedrick truly grasped the gargantuan scale of the universe and all knowledge in it, compared to his relatively tiny understanding. It nearly sent him to his knees. Tears sprang to his eyes when he contrasted this wondrous experience with yesterday’s slaughter and their nightmarish flight into the mountains.

  Humbled, Hedrick watched the starmap dance overhead. He began to wonder how he was supposed to get it to stop. As the idea sprang to mind, the map began to spin ever tighter, pulling inward and fitting pieces together, repacking itself and finally coming to res
t in the cupped hands where it had started.

  Did I do that? Was it his thought that triggered the starry dance to begin with?

  Hedrick glanced over at the cupped pairs of hands once more. Something had rested in the other pair of hands, he felt sure of it. Something was missing. Set into the wall above each hand was a kind of shield. Round and webbed with fissures, like the orb below it, as if it, too, had once been powered by a thousand tiny stars.

  The hands themselves were shaped like human hands, only they weren’t human. They couldn’t be. He counted the joints on his fingers. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.

  Then he counted the joints on these hands. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four—five?

  Fragments of ancient legends swam in his head, but no story he’d ever heard told of aliens with five-jointed fingers.

  “Boy, what are you doing?”

  Hedrick whirled around, his heart racing, sweat pouring down his back. A man in robes of rough brown homespun stood in the doorway. His cowl was pulled up over his head, but Hedrick recognized his voice.

  “I’m, uh, sorry, uh. I didn’t—I mean, I—”

  The man held up his hands placatingly. Hedrick jammed his mouth closed. “It’s okay. I see you found our place of worship.”

  “Worship?”

  “Yes. That’s why we chose this cave, so that we can worship here.”

  Hedrick pursed his lips. “Services for the solstice always take place outdoors, under the open sky. The Book of Animus says—”

  “The Spirit of Old Earth resides in every atom of our being, outdoors or indoors. Wait a minute… Didn’t you help us set up the chairs at the last solstice?”

  Hedrick nodded.

  “That’s right! I love those services, don’t you? Which is your favorite part? The psalms, the sermons?”

  “The music.” Hedrick quietly hummed a bar.

  “Ah yes. Good memory! Tell me your name again?”

  “Hedrick.”

  “That’s right. Your mother's looking for you, kiddo. Why don't you come with me?”

  Hedrick glanced back at the orb and the cupped hands. Did the man see the orb expand into a starmap? Did he know those hands had too many joints to be human? Was Hedrick not supposed to see the orb or know that? He was afraid that saying something would get him in even more trouble, so he kept his mouth shut.

  The man beckoned. “Come on, before she gets too worried.”

  “Sure, sorry. I um, I just got lost—”

  “It’s all right, you didn’t do anything wrong. Come on, now.”

  The man led the way out with a strident step. When he glanced back, Hedrick saw that the rock had re-materialized and the braid of golden flakes in the rock had disappeared. He didn’t remember hearing a door close, or any stones slide aside.

  They took the next left.

  “Isn’t the cave that way?” Hedrick asked.

  “Not to worry, I know a shortcut.”

  Seventeen

  “Ten minutes until the original evacuation deadline,” Harmony said.

  The destruction of the shuttle had caused more delays on Robichar than Kira had anticipated. Debris had to be cleared off the launch pad while extra starfighters were sent in to deliver a replacement shuttle, then patrol to protect the spaceport from additional harm. The Kryl went to ground until nightfall, when they began to drop additional packages on the planet. Then it took longer than she liked for the last few thousand residents to be coaxed onto the new shuttle. Kira reluctantly admitted that it was rational, people’s reluctance to board a shuttle the day after one had been destroyed over the same launchpad, but Earth be damned if it didn’t just gut her every time mission-critical timelines got blown, no matter how often it happened through the years.

  And each casualty added to the total body count made her more and more anxious. This was supposed to be a simple mission, undertaken out of an abundance of caution. And now she’d lost pilots and civilians. The Colonization Board would certainly hear about this and harangue her for it. She hoped they felt guilty as hell. It was their fault this evacuation took so long to get approved. They could have had it done months ago if they’d heeded her warnings when she first brought them to the Board.

  Kira was known for doing the impossible. Putting down rebellions, capturing Kryl recon vehicles whole for Imperial scientists to study, delivering First Class escort missions without a hiccup.

  And now this. It wasn’t even close to a full failure, and yet the losses smarted.

  “The shuttle has left the atmosphere and is on course for the final Mammoth.”

  “Where’s the hive?”

  Her navigations officer, Captain Freelt Garand, had been personally observing the Kryl. Harmony was also monitoring them, of course—one of many systems she was operating simultaneously—but Garand had been the one responsible for helping coordinate the distribution of the floating mines, and they each needed something to keep their minds occupied right now. Waiting and watching the Mammoth fleet, who waited and watched for the shuttle, was more agonizing than raking nails slowly across an aluminite surface.

  “Still seeking out and disabling floating mines, sir,” Garand reported. “That should keep them occupied for a while.”

  “Keep both eyes on them. I want to know before they make a move.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Major Loris.”

  The weapons officer turned toward her. “Sir?”

  “Get those nukes primed and ready to deploy at the first sign of movement.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  The door to the bridge irised open and Kira forced down a sense of irritation. Colonel Volk entered, looking a little haggard, and walked directly over to her. “Sir, Captain Osprey has something you’ll want to see.”

  “Can it wait?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What’s the situation in the medical wing with the sick pilot?”

  “Catastrophe averted. This is something… else.”

  She took a deep breath. It was a relief not to lose another pilot. Keep that casualty count down. But if the colonel was sending her to see Osprey, it meant he didn’t want the officers on the bridge to see what she’d discovered. At least they were being discreet. It still annoyed her to be pulled away.

  “Take over for me, Colonel. Make sure that shuttle docks safely.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  She found Captain Osprey in the war room sipping coffee. The pilot was reviewing footage in three separate frames—the hangar in one, the sick bay in another, and the dashboard footage from her Sabre in a third. The captain also sported several new scratches and scrapes along her face, and dark circles under her eyes. Kira nodded approvingly. She liked to see her young officers give their best to any assignment she gave them, and the lack of sleep meant Casey was taking this one seriously.

  Kira’s role here was to rein the captain in, like a jockey keeping a racehorse in its lane. Even if the horse bucked, the jockey only did it out of love—and a driven desire to win.

  The only other addition to the room was a small, relatively inconspicuous aluminute jar, the kind you might see a doctor use for collecting samples from a patient—set on the octagonal table as far away from the captain as possible. What looked like a worm was curled in a bloody puddle at the bottom of the jar.

  “What on Earth is that thing?”

  Osprey paused her footage, stood, saluted sharply. “That came out of Lieutenant Park, Admiral.”

  “I see.”

  “He was one of ours, sir. One of the Fightin’ Furies.”

  Kira knew very well the nickname of the 137th. She knew the names of every squadron under her command, but this one held special significance. It was her former squadron, the posting where she had met Captain Ruidiaz all those years ago.

  “And how is your Lieutenant Park?”

  “He’s recovering, sir. He’ll have a scar, right here.” She drew her middle finger along the line of
her right clavicle. “But they tell me he’ll make a full recovery. We owe his life to the shipboard AI. She extracted the parasite. I think it’s Kryl in origin.”

  The captain’s back was to the hologram, so the captain didn’t see Harmony whirl Casey’s form around in an elaborate dance and dip.

  Cut it out, Kira thought furiously, even as she allowed a genuine smile to form on her mouth. “I’m glad to hear that. We’ve lost enough good soldiers for one mission.”

  “I agree, Admiral. Which is why I was reviewing footage again. If that thing is what caused Lieutenant Park to go mad, it stands to reason that it—or another like it—is also responsible for what happened to Petty Officer Mick Perry.”

  “Who else knows about this?”

  Captain Osprey paled. “Colonel Volk. Lieutenant Olara Yorra with the Furies. A few others who happened to be in the sick bay at the time. Admiral, you have to understand, I—”

  “It’s not a criticism, Captain, we just need to get ahead of the response. Unanswered questions lead to panic. Harmony, please draft a shipwide memo.”

  “Draft has been sent to your inbox,” she said without a moment’s pause.

  “Thank you.”

  Captain Osprey opened her mouth, then closed it. Apparently she’d never seen the shipmind being used as a secretary. Kira considered it a fair trade. If she had to put up with Harmony’s eccentricities, the least the AI could do was draft boring memos.

  Kira approached the jar and bent down to examine it. It wasn’t a worm, as she had first assumed, but a miniature xeno of some kind. She recognized the blackish-purple coloring of the exoskeleton, the wickedly curved, if miniaturized, talons. But apart from some vague relational similarity to the Kryl, she’d never seen anything like it. And certainly not anything like it inside one of her pilots. “What in all the hells is this thing?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I’ve just been calling it ‘the parasite.’ The more important question, in my opinion, Admiral, is how did it get aboard the ship?”

  Kira looked up. How, indeed? She raised her eyebrows at the captain. “I assume you have a theory? Don’t be shy.”