Chapter Fifteen
MARCH 2124
SECOND-FIVE, ZHAL PRIME (BD +71 482 A)
The Dornaani ship faltered at the last moment, its nose tilting down to port as it kissed the surface of the lake. Steam roiled up from that area as the attitude control thrusters detected the imbalance, fired at maximum, vaporizing the water.
The bow didn’t come up fully, but the angle of impact became shallower. Instead of flipping into a massively destructive ass-over-nose cartwheel, Olsloov simply dug into the water. A wall of spray and hot mist fumed outward as she ploughed forward.
Ugly sounds—as if a trash compactor was brawling with a quarry saw—ripped the air as Olsloov bottomed out, dragging its belly across the shallow, rocky bottom. The drooping delta shape shuddered, bucked, and then stopped just fifteen meters from the far end of the lake.
Alnduul swung closer to examine the underside of the ship. Caine followed. Olsloov’s once smooth belly was now a battered curve of crumpled metal composites punctuated by several jagged rents.
“Doesn’t look like we’ll be flying anywhere soon,” Riordan commented.
Alnduul made an impatient tch-ing noise. “Once main power is restored, the smart materials in the hull will reform and seal the worst of the breaches. We shall be able to lift to orbit, albeit slowly and with great care. But complete restoration will require longer repairs, perhaps during our stopover at BD +66 582. Assuming they still have sufficient facilities.”
Riordan nodded, willed the grav unit to lower him to the ground. The wind was cool and brisk, but his duty suit’s smart fabric and EVA insert combined to keep him comfortable. He looked up at the sun. “I thought this star, BD +71 482 A, was a red dwarf.”
“It has been listed as such in your catalogs.” Alnduul was silent for a moment, seemed to be inspecting a particularly ragged tear in Olsloov’s hull. “Now that you are here observing it, what would you presume it to be?”
Riordan thought, “Adjust HUD screening to enable safe observation of local star.” The plasma curtain in front of his eyes darkened to a ghostly slate color. “Looks more like a K9 V to me. Still enough to keep Zhal Prime Second tidally locked, even with multiple moons tugging on it.”
Alnduul boosted higher, searching for damage to the hull’s dorsal surface. “Indeed.” He gestured to the left. The large gray and brown planet in question was strangely diaphanous, a ghostly sphere that barely managed to superimpose itself upon the teal sky of this, its fifth and most distant moon. “Fortunately, Second-Five has enough distance and mass to ensure that it is not face-locked to its parent, but rotation is slowed. This moon only revolves six times in the course of its twenty-four-day orbit.”
Riordan tried to do the math, then tried to visualize a model, then gave up. “And what does that mean in terms of day and night cycles?”
“A complex pattern, with libration effects creating extended dawns and dusks.”
Riordan looked at the deep orange sun. “So how much daylight do we have?”
“Approximately thirty hours, the last twenty of which will be dangerously dim.”
“Dangerously?”
Alnduul floated down beside Riordan. “The surface has not been visited for almost two centuries. Hazardous biota may have returned to this region. We will find out when we descend.”
Riordan watched the last wisps of steam rise up from under Olsloov. They evaporated almost instantly. “Alnduul, I’m happy to help out, but if I’m too important to risk, then why am I the one going with you?”
Alnduul’s mouth rotated slightly, tightly: wry amusement. “Because there are only two gravitic thruster units on Olsloov. One is part of its allotted equipment. The other is a human model, on loan for your use.” He began walking back to the edge of the drift-butte’s topland. “So it was either attempt these missions alone, or with your help.”
Riordan nodded. “I take it that Irzhresht is too slender for mine to fit, despite her height?”
“That is only part of what precludes her participation. Extended exertion in a gravity well would gravely damage her health. Her people are a subspecies of the main Dornaani genotype: she is a ‘low-gee.’” Alnduul slurred it into a single world: “loji.”
Once at the lip of the drift-butte, Riordan surveyed the terrain five kilometers below: mostly flat, speckled by lakes. “So where is the port authority complex?”
Alnduul pointed far to the left. “There.”
Riordan squinted, looked for buildings but didn’t see any. However, near a great confluence of lakes and rivers, there seemed to be a distortion which blurred the outlines of the waterways beneath and beyond it, as if they were being seen through an unfocused lens of impossibly strange shape.
The clouds moved. Dark amber light fell across that stretch of land, and then glinted on an impossible midair arc.
“What the—?” Riordan murmured before thinking to use the circlet. “Twenty times magnification on central object.” The curve of light enlarged, limning a ghostly arch that grew until it loomed titanic and graceful. “It that a structure?”
“It is,” Alnduul replied.
“And it’s transparent? Like glass?”
“More perfectly transparent than glass, but yes. It is a marker and also a piezo-electric receiver, when need be.”
Riordan measured the gold-gleaming hemicircle with the magnifying center of his plasma-HUD. “That must be—what? Three kilometers high?”
“Slightly more.”
“And is it part of the port?”
“No. It is an outlying facility and navigation landmark. We shall go there first. It is a comparatively safe point from which we may observe the port authority complex and assess its conditions.”
Riordan saw white, sinuous aviforms wheeling closely around the arch, possibly attracted by its glow. Although the peak of its rim was barely half as high as their current perch, the idea of standing on that smooth, probably frictionless curve sent a pulse of height-panic up Riordan’s calves. He made sure his question sounded casual: “So, we’re just going to fly over there and take a look?”
Alnduul’s voice may have been somewhat amused. “Whenever you are ready.”
* * *
Riordan found it difficult to trust his eyes during what felt like the slow-motion fall toward the arch of glass. As reflections of sky and sun vied with the view through to the terrain below, his eyes kept shifting between different depths of focus. To compensate, he instructed his HUD to outline and graph the arch. Faint, glowing lime-green lines transmogrified the ghostly structure into a grid work—much easier to keep track of its dimensions and shape that way.
Slowing as he drifted toward the peak of the arch, the cream-white aviforms rose up higher along its arms. Each snakelike body had a pair of large, membranous wings, with smaller auxiliary flaps near its pointed nose (canards?) and a bifurcated tail (horizontal stabilizers?). They were predominantly gliders, catching updrafts rather than working their wings.
However, Riordan could not detect any sense organs or orifices. As his feet settled carefully on what now felt and looked like a perfectly flat plane of glass, he asked Alnduul, “Those snake-gliders: how do they see? Or eat?”
The Dornaani landed beside him with a nonchalance that suggested long years of familiarity with the grav unit. “The datafile I perused indicates that their alimentary orifices are all located on the anterior surface. Much akin to the design of your home planet’s ocean rays, if I recall correctly. Their complex eyes are located to either side of their mouth, as are their audial receptors.”
Riordan watched one of the serpentine avians circle the arms of the arch in a nimble, twisting arabesque. A row of tan spots ran in twin tracks from its nose to the area just behind its rearmost canards. He commanded the HUD to capture the image and send it to Alnduul. “Primitive eyes, do you think? Defensive light sensors?”
Alnduul studied it for a moment. “Quite likely. However, the datafile defines these as the largest aviforms on the planet, without predators. In the air, that is.”
“And on the ground?”
“They are at the mercy of many creatures, including the adult forms of their own species.”
“They ultimately become ground-dwellers?”
Alnduul raised an affirming finger. “When they attain breeding age, they build a cocoon. They emerge with fully developed sex organs and with legs rather than wings.”
Riordan studied the snake-gliders. Their wings were too flexible to have a rigid bone structure. Something more akin to cartilage, probably. “It doesn’t look as though those wings could ever develop into limbs.”
“They do not. They wither and are absorbed by the organism during its quasi-chrysalis stage. Note, however, the two pairs of prehensile manipulators they keep against their bodies as they fly. Those are the appendages that evolve into limbs.”
Riordan waited for one of the snake-gliders to roll over and was rewarded with a glimpse of the manipulators. They were reminiscent of a shark’s claspers, except they were longer and stronger. That was also when he saw one of their mouths: a constantly active maw in which heavy shearing teeth gnawed at the air. Caine reconsidered the creatures: no longer just intriguing and beautiful, they were now a swarm of potential killers, as well. “I take it they are carnivorous.”
“They are said to be indiscriminate hunters,” Alnduul confirmed. “If a ground animal is no larger than they are, they will attack it.”
Okay, so not potential killers; proven killers. “And if they come after us?”
“You employ the lasers with which you drew the ground batteries’ fire. It is unlikely the beams will kill the creatures, but the resulting wound should chase them off.”
“Should chase them off?”
Alnduul’s inner lid nictated lazily. “There are no certainties when it comes to the behavior of fauna, Caine Riordan.”
Caine looked down, discerned a paved square about two kilometers to the left of their position. “Is that the port authority complex?”
“Yes.”
“It looks pretty overgrown.”
“Evidently the automated tenders have failed.”
Riordan zoomed in on the square. A low-set building dominated its far end, overgrown with vines half a meter thick. “So what’s the plan?”
“The vegetation on the roof obstructs any possible means of ingress there. So we must use the entrance that faces the paved area. We shall descend to the far edge of the square, inspect it for automated defenses, disarm or disable them, breach the doors, and make our way to the computing core. At that point, it will either accept an update or we will have to disable the facility.”
Riordan studied the square more carefully. “Is the square protected by an aerial defense envelope?”
“Yes, out to its far end. However, if we are not airborne above it, we will not be attacked.”
“And the ground defenses?”
Alnduul’s mouth twisted slightly further. “The air and ground defenses are provided by the same units. We will not be able to avoid engaging them. Are you prepared?”
Riordan took in the strange landscape of scattered lakes and the rust and bright green vegetation that wound among them, all of which faded into a hazy horizon. The unearthly vista was not just compelling, it might also be the last he’d ever see. If it wasn’t for alternating memories of Elena’s sleeping face, and Connor’s eager, hopeful one, he might just have told Alnduul to put him back in cold sleep until some other ship came along and used its weapons to flatten the port authority. Flying into unscouted terrain to enter an unknown structure, both of which might be populated by hostile biota and automata, was not Caine’s idea of a tactically prudent solution. But unless he wanted to lengthen an already overlong journey…
Caine brought his chin up. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”