Battlecruiser Alamo_Cries in the Dark Read online

   “We know the builders mastered gravity manipulation, as strange as that sounds,” Salazar replied. “I guess putting together a train should have been easy enough for them.”

   “I can’t even find the motor,” Lombardo replied. “There doesn’t seem to be any sort of mechanism at all, not even a transmitter. It’s as though it works simply because it works.” Glancing at the controls, he added, “And these are built for a human to use. Base-ten readouts, everything accepting the right sort of pressure, right down to the last detail.”

   “Converted.”

   “Anyone smart enough to do that would be smart enough to build the damn thing for themselves. There’s something here, Pavel. More than we’ve guessed so far.”

   “With all this space to roam in, Art, I’d have to agree with you. Anything could be out there. Anything. There’s room for trillions of people, thousands of civilizations as large as the Confederation, larger. Room for almost anything you can conceive or imagine.”

   A smile curled Lombardo’s lips, and he said, “I almost get the idea you don’t mind being stranded down here.”

   “Maybe I don’t,” he replied. “Under other circumstances, I could quite happily spend the rest of my life here.” Gesturing at the sweep of the landscape, he added, “I always wanted to explore new worlds, new lands. I never figured I could do it on foot. Even with this train at full speed, it would take decades just to circumnavigate the Sphere. Thousands of years to come up with any sort of a search pattern. We could settle everyone in the Confederation within walking distance of Base Camp, and still have room for more.”

   “Perhaps we ought to start thinking about that,” Lombardo said, turning back to Salazar. “How long are we going to wait for Alamo?”

   “They’ll be back,” he replied. “One way or another, they’ll find a way back.”

   “And if we’re not there when they do?”

   “We stay within two days of Base Camp by train,” Salazar replied. “And we watch for signals every night. I know Maggie Orlova well enough to know that she won’t give up on us easily or quickly. You know that. Besides, it’ll take them a while to repair their damage. If I was her, I’d pick some quiet spot, some asteroid belt, and moor in a sensor blind spot while I licked my wounds for a bit. The ship’s been through worse.” Looking back at the controls, he continued, “Two minutes. Better get ready.”

   “Right,” Salazar said, rising from his seat. He walked back to the cabin, the rest of his team waiting for him, already prepared for the mission. Kristen Harper walked over to him, communicator in hand, a frown on her face.

   “I’ve been trying to reach them for the last twenty minutes. No reply. I know our communicators don’t work that well in here, but they should have heard us easily at this range.”

   “It’s been months,” Salazar replied. “Maybe they aren’t keeping a constant communications watch any more.” He shook his head, then said, “No, that doesn’t make any sense. Unless something else has gone wrong.” Pulling out one of their few remaining datapads, he called up the information Captain Orlova had left them. “Twenty-two survivors from Monitor, all of them survival-trained and with all the emergency equipment they could want.”

   “I still don’t know why they’d go so deep into the Sphere,” Lance-Sergeant Fox, their sole Espatier, said. “They’d have been a lot better off staying close to Base Camp.”

   “Maybe they knew something we don’t,” Harper replied, gloomily. “Or maybe they’re already dead. One thing we do know is that this is a damned dangerous place, and I don’t like the idea of simply charging into the colony without warning.”

   “I don’t like it much either,” Salazar said, “but we don’t have a choice. There’s damned little cover out there. Probably why they picked it. Lots of advance warning if someone turns up.” He looked down at the datapad again, scrolling through the too-brief report for the hundredth time. Alamo hadn’t been the first Triplanetary ship to reach the Sphere. That honor had gone to Monitor, a lost starcruiser, commanded by Margaret Orlova. Her they had found, wandering through one of the endless deserts to the south, but she’d left behind a couple of dozen of her crew, trying to scrape out a living from the soil, expecting that they’d be remaining on the Sphere for the rest of their lives.

   Heading to their aid first had been an easy call. There hadn’t been a chance to go looking for them while Alamo was still close by, but if they could consolidate all their forces close to the exit, it would make their rescue a lot easier once help arrived.

   If help arrived.

   He had to assume that it would. Or be forced to give up hope entirely.

   “Thirty seconds,” Lombardo said, calling from the cabin. “No sign of life out there, boss. Nothing at all. Though I can see some prefabricated buildings, Triplanetary design, coming up. Just as advertised.”

   Turning to Harper, Salazar said, “We’ll go ahead. The rest of you stay behind.”

   “Sir,” Fox protested, “I should be...”

   “No,” he replied. “If something goes wrong, if this turns out to be some sort of trap, I want you back here to find some way of getting us out of it again. Having said that, Art, if you don’t have a choice, then get out of here and return to Base Camp. Got that?”

   Shaking his head, he said, “No, skipper. Not with six of us out here.”

   “That’s an order, Lieutenant,” Salazar said, pulling out his sidearm. He reached into his pocket, tapped a button on his communicator, and said, “We’ll be in constant contact. Keep listening out. And watch for any sign of trouble.”

   “Good luck, boss,” Lombardo said. “We’ll be waiting.”

   With a quick glance at Harper, he walked across the open ground towards the waiting buildings, half a dozen hastily constructed prefabricated structures dumped on the ground, a quarter of a mile from the invisible magnetic tracks. There was no sign of anything strange here, no sign of anything at all, no noise to break the oppressive silence.

   “Subsurface water,” Harper said, waving a sensor feed around. “Big aquifer, not that deep. Not a bad place to set up a farm, if you like that sort of thing.”

   Frowning, Salazar replied, “Not what I would have done. There are enough civilizations scattered around the Sphere. One of them must have indoor plumbing and central heating.” Cracking a smile, he added, “No sign of defenses. They weren’t expecting an attack. Not even a guard tower. Bad planning.”

   The two of them walked towards the outpost, then froze in their tracks when the smell hit their noses. Rotting meat. Dead for some time. Harper looked to the right, sighed, and gestured at Salazar, who glanced in the indicated direction. A figure lay on the ground, sprawled, obviously the source of the smell. Slowly, they made their way to his side, constantly looking at the horizon, waiting for any further signs of trouble.

   “How long?” Salazar asked, looking down at the decomposing corpse as Harper ran her sensor feed across the body.

   “Three, four weeks, I think,” she replied. “DNA match indicates this was Senior Spacemen Ken Poole. Life support systems technician. From Monitor, so that much is confirmed, at any rate.” Looking at the figure, she added, “No way to tell how he died without an autopsy. We probably should have brought Garland with us.”

   “I think he’s a bit beyond first aid, Kris,” Salazar replied. “Let’s check out the rest of the buildings, though I don’t think there’s any further doubt about what we’re going to find.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out two pairs of nose plugs, and passed one over to Harper. “Here.”

   “Thanks,” she replied, sliding them in place. “Should have thought of that before.”

   “Yeah,” he said, leading the way, pistol still in hand. As he approached the buildings, he saw three more bodies on the ground, evidently left where they had fallen, and grimaced as he looked at the facades of the buildings, festooned with bullet holes, some of
them splattered with blood. On the far side of the

   “I guess we know what happened here,” Harper said with a sigh.

   “Not yet,” Salazar replied. “Not until we have some idea who did it.”

   “The Sphere’s big, Pavel,” she said. “Too big for revenge.”

   “Four bodies,” he said. “Only four. That still leaves eighteen others, and if they’re out there somewhere, we’re going to have to find them.” He paused, then spotted something on the ground, his eyes widening as he raced towards it. Another body, but this one totally different to anything he’d ever seen before. A silver sheen, some sort of strange pigmentation, but that wasn’t the oddest part. Not by far.

   For attached to the rear of the body was a pair of perfect wings, six feet across.

   “That’s the thing with this place,” he said, as Harper walked up beside him. “Every answer just brings up a thousand more questions.”

  Chapter 2

   Clarke rubbed his weary eyes as he struggled to focus on the monitor, the sensor logs playing at sixty times their normal speed to display hours of data in minutes. The computers had eliminated most of the footage as being irrelevant, but had highlighted hundreds of files for him to examine, all so far displaying nothing out of the ordinary. Alamo’s computers could have completed this task in a matter of minutes, but with only a pair of battered datapads at their disposal, this was going to be a more arduous, and frustrating, task.

   He replayed the last moment of the file, confirming that the reading had just been a swarm of migrating birds, tens of thousands of them flying through the sky, and shut off the machine as he reached for a cup of cold coffee, taking a bitter swig and rubbing his eyes again. Behind him, Mortimer walked in, taking a seat next to him.

   “You think you’ve got it bad,” she said. “Everyone else is on clean-up duty.” Shaking her head, she continued, “Whoever the bastards were, they made one hell of a mess out there. And aside from that corpse, they didn’t leave any sign of what happened. You find anything yet?”

   “Not a damned thing,” Clarke said. He tapped a control, bringing up the next file, and said, “There’s nothing for hundreds of miles, though. I know that much. That’s probably why they picked the place. No chance of unintentional contact.”

   Pulling out a chunk of alloy, Mortimer replied, “There might not be anything here now, but there certainly was at one time. That’s scattered all over the place out there. I ran a full analysis on it, and that’s some sort of material completely unknown to us, tougher and stronger than anything we have back home.”

   With a shrug, Clarke said, “I’m not surprised. This place is old, Ronnie, and there’s been time for civilizations to spring up and fade away a thousand times. Maybe even ones that could encompass the whole Sphere, as unimaginable as that sounds. What about that creature outside?”

   “Harper did a full scan,” Mortimer replied, “and frankly didn’t come up with very much. We need facilities we don’t have. Strange as it seems, though, it’s human-descended, though the subject of some pretty damned intensive genetic manipulation. And it couldn’t fly without assistance in full-gravity, though higher up, it ought to be fine.”

   “Someone’s breeding winged aliens out here?”

   “I guess so,” she said. “It certainly wasn’t natural. Not with the thousands of changes they must have made. When we get home, a lot of geneticists are going to want to take a look at it, I’ll tell you that. Even if it is beginning to stink. We’re taking it back to Base Camp for analysis.” Glancing at her watch, she said, “Incidentally, the Captain’s ordering us out at first light. No point staying around here any longer than we have to, I guess.”

   Nodding, Clarke said, “I’ll be glad to get out of here. This place is a graveyard. Hell of a place to spend the night. If it was up to me, we’d be leaving now.”

   “He doesn’t want to travel in the dark unless it’s absolutely necessary.” She frowned, then asked, “You picking up something around here?”

   “Maybe it’s just my paranoia playing up, but if something could come out of the sky one night and kill everyone once, there’s no reason why it couldn’t happen again. No reason at all.” Gesturing at an inventory display, he added, “They were armed better than we are. Plasma cannons, machine guns, surveillance drones. And still they died.”

   “We don’t know that they’re all dead,” she replied. “We only found eight bodies in the end. And there were twenty-seven people here. We know that much. You’re letting this place get to you.” Frowning, she continued, “Not that I can particularly blame you for that, I guess.”

   “I’m glad you agree,” he said. Then something caught his eye, and he froze the frame, tapping a control to throw an infra-red filter over the image. “Got it.”

   “Let me see,” she replied, leaning over the screen.

   Displayed dead center on the monitor was a swarm of thousands of the winged creatures, each holding weapons in their hands, with point-heat sources on their rear that had to be thruster packs, boosters to compensate for their inability to fly in high-gravity areas.

   “I guess that answers that question,” he said. He looked at the time index, and his eyes widened. “Nine days ago. Or to be precise, eight days, twenty-three hours and forty-nine minutes ago.” He reached for the controls, and said, “Let me see if I can track their course. They couldn’t have flown far.”

   Mortimer reached for her sidearm, and said, “I think I’m beginning to agree with that idea of yours. Getting out of here in a hurry….”

   The monitor flickered out, replaced with a wide view of the area, a trio of the high-orbiting moons overhead. Clarke’s fingers raced across the controls as he worked to track their course, a dotted line racing back towards the nearest moon. Smiling in satisfaction, he worked in the sensor data gathered by the deserted outpost, using it to plot the path of the moon. The smile faded to a scowl as the orbital track worked through.

   “It’s on a strange orbit, looping around four other satellites,” he said. “No way it could be natural. Hell, it’s orbiting in atmosphere. Something must be holding it on station.” Turning to Mortimer, he added, “And it’s going to be overhead any time now.” Pulling out a datarod, he rose to his feet, the chair falling onto the floor. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

   “Way ahead of you,” she replied, racing to the exit, pistol in hand. The two of them raced to the communications shack, Salazar and Harper futilely attempting to contact Base Camp, both turning to face the red-faced officers as they stormed inside.

   “We’ve got to get out of here, right now,” Mortimer said.

   Nodding, Clarke added, “Unless I miss my guess, sir, we’re going to come under attack at any moment by the same force that struck this settlement before. Think of a couple of thousand of those winged humanoids, all of them armed, against our current firepower. We wouldn’t stand a chance, sir. No more than they did.” Tapping his pocket, he said, “I’ve got all the sensor data, and I can interpret it at Base Camp. I don’t think there’s anything else for us here.”

   Salazar glanced at Harper, nodded, then pulled out his communicator, saying, “Lombardo, warm up our engine. We’re leaving immediately.” Throwing another control, he added, “All personnel, immediate evacuation. Back to the train on the double. Take only what you need with you. Abandon the rest.” Moving to the door, he looked at the others, and asked, “What are you waiting for?”

   The quartet raced across the plain at a fast jog, the others quickly following, easily keeping pace, weapons drawn. Harper pulled out her datapad, tapping a series of controls, then tossed the sensor feeds over her shoulder, roughly pointing at the sky. Clarke looked up, spotting the silvery moon flying overhead. The technology would be required to keep them in the sky was almost inconceivable, until he looked around at the immensity of the Sphere all around him. Controlled gravity. The holy grail of spaceflight
for centuries, and about as attainable. Except that it was a reality, right here.

   “Maybe we’re in time,” Fox said, easily taking the lead. “Maybe we’re panicking over nothing.”

   “I’d love to think so,” Clarke replied. “I just know that I’ll sleep a hell of a lot better tonight if we’re already on our way back to Base Camp.” Glancing up at the sky, he spotted something passing in front of the moon, and turned to Harper, asking, “Are you picking anything up, ma’am?”

   “Not a thing,” she replied.

   “I can see something. A shadow. Maybe ten thousand feet up.”

   “Me too,” Mortimer added. “Something’s playing games with the long-range sensors, Lieutenant. We only spotted them on the recordings when they got damn near close enough to touch.” Glancing over her shoulder again, she said, “Nine thousand feet and falling fast.”

   “How fast can they possibly move?” Fox asked.

   “They’ve got some sort of jet pack,” Clarke replied. “Meaning that they can probably move just as fast as they need to.”

   “Lombardo,” Salazar said, yelling into his communicator. “Tell me you’re ready to run!”

   “All set here, skipper,” the engineer replied. “What’s the panic?”

   “A thousand winged demons flying our way.”

   There was a pause, and Lombardo replied, “Whatever it is you’ve been drinking, boss, I hope you saved me some.” A second later, he continued, “Good God, I can see them! Heading right for you, little points of light in the sky. Sensors aren’t picking up anything!”

   Harper stuffed her datapad in her pocket, and said, “Might as well save the battery. Four hundred meters to go.” A loud crack filled the air, and a fountain of dirt rose from the ground, a new crater slammed into the earth. “Evasive!”