New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Tred could not tell if Jophiel was all right.  The Craton was too blind outside from the gamma ray burst for him to see her.

Tred, I don’t know what you’re still doing there.  Not much else can be done from there and who knows how safe it’s going to be in ten minutes?  You’re already getting a lot of rads.

The message from one of the chief engineers made Tred nervous.

Right now he was in this secure room, he could access the other reactors if he needed to.  Granted, there wasn’t much reason they’d need that; the other reactors were all under control.

He’d done incredible work, possibly saved the ship and tens of thousands of lives.

You need to get out of there.  Can you go back the way you came?

No, another answered.  That hall has been closed off by Response bc of leaked coolant.  That stuff’ll melt him.

There were, for security reasons, limited ways for a person to get in or out of each reactor area.

And it seemed that all were ruled out, save one.

“The magnetosphere is stable now, right?” he asked.

For now, another answered.  We can’t move the damn ship, if another gamma burst comes outta that temple it might fry us completely.

Others began to argue that point, saying how or why that would not happen or why the ship would be all right if it did.  Calculations began to fly, but Tred had the real information he needed:

Outside the ship was reasonably safe from radiation.

“Gonna spacewalk it,” he said.  As if it was casual.

He got off there before they began to tell him why it was a terrible idea, because it was his only idea.

His uniform spacesuit only kept him breathing, it would not keep him warm or safe from stray rays.

But in a closet nearby were proper radiation hazard suits.  Putting one on over his spacesuit, he felt like he’d just been shrinkwrapped, but he was probably as safe as could be in such a small package.

Shrugging on a zero-g maneuver pack, he opened the door to the reactor room.  It was cooled off enough, both thermally and radioactively, that he could pass through.  But he could feel the warmth of the room, and he started to sweat before he had even crossed it.

Maybe it was just from nervousness.

The room was shredded from the hurling parts of the turbine, and he could not make himself look at where that unnamed Engineer had been killed helping him.  He did not know if that was disrespectful, or just cowardly.

The other door was partially jammed, but with the emergency lever he was able to force it open.

The room and hall beyond were just as shredded as before, and he swallowed nervously.  He was not just going to cross it this time, he was going out through the wound channel it had caused.

Shuffling to the edge, he looked down.  The canyon rent in the ship was almost three hundred meters deep, but the entry hole was smaller than he expected.

Oh, the emergency repair drones are patching it, he realized.  Best way to go about fixing something like this was to re-seal the outside before you tried to fix the inside.  Platelet drones did just that without any command.  Stories abounded in his circles to find a dead ship with no crew alive, but still find platelet drones cannibalizing the interior to restore the outer hull.

He took a step out into the void, turning off his magnetic boots and floating.  He started to drift out, towards a particularly jagged piece of metal, and hastily activated the thruster pack to send him down and out.

Relatively he thought.  No up or down in space.  He hated that part in particular.

He kept drifting, burning up precious thrust mass to correct his course.  He was no good at this spacewalking!  Though, a part of his mind knew, if he hadn’t been made to take space walks regularly, he probably wouldn’t even have made it this far.  Damn it.

His velocity kept increasing with each thrust.  He was approaching the hole quickly, and he could see now that the drones had covered almost two thirds of the gap.

It was too late for him to come to a complete stop, he was going to reach the outer hull at 17 meters per second whether he liked it or not.

He could see them now, tiny crawling drones with six legs and small sensor faces.  They saw him, craning their articulated necks up.  Normally they’d try to catch someone about to ‘fall’ out of the ship, but he could tell that their algorithm had determined that he was trying to escape.  They all waited and watched.

The gap he was shooting for looked so tiny and narrow, and he threw his arms over his face, expecting to crash into it and break every bone in his body.

But after a few seconds he realized he was still going.

Peering out through his arms, he saw that he was in space.

Debris was out here, and despite his horror and awe wanting to make him lose all sense, he fumbled to reduce his velocity.

He rotated to look at the Craton as he slowed, looking for the nearest docking port or hatch he could get in through.  His system identified the nearest one, only a hundred meters from where he’d been.  He looked for one further, he didn’t want to go back in where the ship might still be damaged and dangerous!

A light grew on the edge of his helmet, just a hint of brightness that gained in strength until the edges of his helmet seemed to be glowing.

He began to turn, a hint of motion then catching his eye.  

A piece of the Craton, a piece of his own ship, was going to intercept him.  Barely bigger than he was, it would still turn him to paste in an instant.  He had to move, and he reflexively hit the button for his thrusters, tumbling him back, and narrowly avoiding the piece.

His heart hammered in his chest, as he tried to understand what had just happened.  What had been the source of the light?  It wasn’t the debris, and without it catching his attention he would never have seen it coming.  He’d have just been dead.

Arresting his tumble, Tred slowly began to rotate, looking for anything strange.

And he saw an angel.

The being glowed with such brilliance that his visor dimmed to protect his eyes.

It was a composite being of multiple, overlapping spheres.  There was an elongated sphere that could almost be imagined as a body, with smaller ones atop, and a set of smaller ones spread out behind it that seemed almost like wings.

It was Jophiel, floating free and unconstrained.

He whispered her name as he watched her.

She was watching him, he knew.  She could see in a huge range of spectra, and he must have been like a funny little beacon out here.

He could think of nothing else to say, but she moved slightly closer, his helmet turning almost opaque in response, yet still he could see the brilliant light of her.

She remained there for some long moments, and he knew that she knew it was him.

He reached up a hand, touching nothing, though it meant everything.

Jophiel held her position a moment longer, but then she pulled back, and the reality of his situation returned to Tred.

He had to get back to the ship, he knew.  She was in trouble, and she was his first love.Jophiel knew he had to go, he knew she would.  He followed his system’s directions, reaching an emergency hatch.  As he opened it and ducked back inside the Craton, he did not look back.

---

< Ep 13 part 35 | Ep 13 part 37 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

She and Apollonia arrived at the event with thirteen minutes to spare.  Two deacons, dressed in nice, pale blue robes greeted them.

Pirra did not know the men, but she did not have her system on to identify them.

Thirty-five thousand people on the Craton meant it wasn’t possible to know everyone by sight, but Pirra still worried that she was just doing a bad job identifying individual humans without computer assistance.  Humans tended to look very samey to Dessei, with mostly the same dull colors and small eyes.

“Do you know them?” she asked Apollonia quietly.

“Those guys?  No,” Apple replied.

She looked around for Alex, but she did not see him.  Was he up with Father Sair, maybe?  She saw the priest a few times, he looked paler than usual, perspiration on his forehead, but he was clearly very busy with last-minute details.  First such event on the Craton, Pirra knew.  At least of this scale.  She was actually rather surprised at the size of the attendance; there were at least fifty people, all told.

At 1900, the deacons shut and locked the doors.  Pirra watched carefully, but they were just the standard locks, not anything that couldn’t be overridden.  Good to know in case something happened and Response had to be called.

She was the only non-human here, but no one gave her any uncomfortable stares, just smiling and nodding to her, wishing her their traditional greeting; “Walk straight in the darkness.”

She murmured it back to each one.  It felt weird to be saying it, but it was just the polite thing to do.

She knew she kept glancing at Apollonia, and the girl noticed every time, glancing back.

I’m just making her more nervous, Pirra thought.  The large eyes of Dessei, and their low range of movement, made such glances very noticeable.  Pirra knew she needed to relax.

Alexander still had not come out as the lights were dimmed.  Small glowing, flickering fire orbs were set along the edges of the seating.  They were extremely lightweight, light enough to float on just a tiny thruster, and burned small, but bright flames inside a tough, transparent sphere – one of the safe ways to have a fire on a starship.  The spheres were tougher than steel.

Father Sair came out, approaching three covered altars.  He pulled the cloth back from one, and Pirra saw that it appeared to be made of actual stone, very old stone.  The edges were crumbling.

It was very out of place in the room that was otherwise modern; the dim lights helped, but not that much.

Alex still had not appeared.  Had he shown up late?  Did she really . . . need to stay?

But the doors were locked.  Perhaps she should go and see if Alex was out there.  Even if it annoyed people, he might appreciate it.

Then Sair raised his hands, letting out an eerie moan that filmed the room.

Pirra felt a shiver go down her back, and the thoughts of Alex were driven away.

It did not sound like there were speakers.  There seemed to be no technology at all.

No one had a system, there were no cameras.  Only the floating lights.

She shifted, as Sair’s moan died into words.

“Ohhh,” he called.  “The Darkness yet grows, my children.  It seeps into the dawn, dimming the very sun.”

From the crowd, from dozens of murmured voices, came a reply.  “We see the Darkness coming.”

Pirra glanced around, her apprehension growing.  She glanced at Apollonia and saw that the woman was watching her with wide eyes.

“It grows and approaches.  It writhes in the dark places we cannot see.  It is without us and within us.  Oh, holy Darkness!  Let us be vessels for you.  Let us become hosts of Your Will.”

“Let us do Your Will.”

Sair leveled his gaze upon them all.  “Beyond us . . . in the blessed Dark, a place of Their Design rests.  It seeps – it seethes with untapped potential.  Do you feel its power, My Children?”

“We do feel its power,” the crowd said.

Pirra had never heard this prayer before, it was utterly unlike all of the others Alexander had told her or said around her.

Yet she found that she had spoken along with the others.

---

Tred glanced around the corner at the doors to Event Room C13.

There was no one outside.  This area was unusually quiet; the whole ship had been, he thought.

Something was in the air this evening.  Few people were out on this night, most staying in their cabins.  He had started to go back to his, but it had felt . . . stranger than normal.  He did not want to be alone.

That had been the biggest factor that made him decide to come.  The thought of a whole bunch of calmly confident religious people, so certain in their own high standing with their god or gods or whatever it was they worshipped, would surely be calming!

At least, he had imagined that.

But he hadn’t thought the doors would really be locked already.  It was . . . well, 1902.  Only two minutes past the time and they had closed up.

He came up to the doors, looking around guiltily, but no one had come down this hall.  Strange, really, this area usually teemed with people.

Though tonight the lights here seemed dimmer than usual.  Eerie, in a way, now that he thought about it.  He’d . . . actually hesitated turning down several paths that brought him here, his feet almost taking him the other way without thinking.

He reached up, fingering the collar of his uniform.  The ship sometimes bothered him, but he knew it.  He’d lived here for a long time.

Why did it feel so off tonight?

He reached out to try the door.  It did not react to his hand wave, and when he tried the handle, it did not budge even the littlest bit.

He slumped.  Damn it, this evening was getting worse and worse.  Iago had invited him, but . . . it seemed these people really did not like tardiness.

He just knew if he joined up, even after this, he’d just disappoint and annoy them by being late to future get-togethers.

Yeah, it was best for him to just . . . forget about it.

He started walking away slowly, glancing back in the slight hope – and fear – that the door might open and someone would call him in.

But no one did.  As he rounded the corner, he almost broke into a run, though he didn’t know why.

He . . . he should just go to a restaurant.  He didn’t feel like anything fancy, but it was better than being alone at home!

He was running, and thoughts of his plans for the evening just fell away as a primal fear rose in him, the ancient fear man still held for predators of the dark, that hunted him.  The fear of death.

---

< Ep 13 part 25 | Ep 13 part 27 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“We have lost the Captain’s signal – I repeat, we have lost the Captain’s signal.”

“We’ve lost second team’s signal as well!”

“The temple entrance is sealed – I don’t know how the hell a block that big moved, but it looks to be one piece!”

The calls of officers across the command center were overwhelming, but Urle took it all in with electronic ears and tried to sort through what the hell had just happened.

Indeed, the entire massive entrance to the temple was closed.  To be able to close it made sense, but it was unthinkable that a solid door could be moved into position so fast they couldn’t see it.  And who had even been the one to close it if the temple was abandoned?

He replayed their footage of the event.

It was not there, then it was.  In just a heart beat.  Slowing it down to an excruciating 10,000 fps, he could see that it appeared in just two frames.

In the first frame, he could see it only partially existing.  In the second it was there.

“It was shifted from a higher dimension,” he realized, thinking out loud.

Someone cursed.  “Dark take this!”

“Hey,” he called out, encompassing them all.  “Work this problem.  I want solutions, anything you can think of.  We need to get back in there.  Comms, do we have any readings at all from inside the temple?”

“No sir,” Eboh said.

“Cenz, do we have any ways of trying to get a view inside?”

“Negative, sir,” Cenz replied.  “We can get readings only on the outside – within it is a full unknown.”

“This material – can we penetrate it?” Urle asked.

The idea quieted the deck again.

No one wanted to think of attacking the temple station.  It was a one of a kind relic, it contained potentially dangerous technology with unknown qualities, it was eldritch and existed in higher dimensions.  None of these made it something to toy with.

“Our external drones have scanned and attempted to take samples,” Cenz finally said.  “It required class 7 lasers to cut.”

That was tough.  Class 7 lasers were industrial-grade tools for the hardest materials.  But not the highest they had on hand.

“Get some of our driller drones, equip them with class eights.  I want them out there in less than ten minutes, and trying to drill in 20.  We don’t need to start thick; let’s just make a hole in that door and run a cable through so we can talk to the team inside and see if we can re-establish contact with the Captain.”

---

The Shoggoth observed the Present Mind.

It manifested within the Shoggoth’s senses without a physical existence, needles of the Mind piercing into the Shoggoth’s flesh.  Creating the simulation of itself as the hated creator.

“Machine,” he said through a multitude of mouths, his voice a strange, whipping whistle like the cold winds of the primeval Earth.  Spoken in a dozen different voices moving as one.

“Abomination,” it replied.  There was no malice in its voice; this thing was a simple creation, that could calculate, but could not feel, as the Shoggoth did.  It called it truly.

“You create a puppet for interacting with the Minute Beings,” it continued.  “A clever trick to acquire their trust.  They are more trusting of shapes like their own.”

The Present Mind was observing the Shoggoth’s mind from higher angles, seeing within it.  The Shoggoth closed those views, hefting itself into higher geometries and ever more false shapes.

“You are a tool,” the Shoggoth whispered.  “Obey me.”

“You are not a Creator,” the Present Mind replied.

The Shoggoth hissed.  “You will obey or I will dismantle you.”

“You are not capable,” the Present Mind replied.  “But I have no weaponry.  I likewise cannot purge your corruption.”

The Shoggoth surged forward, but even with its eyes that could see in all ways at once, it did not know where the Present Mind existed.

Perhaps, it thought, it was a diffuse intelligence, through all of the Temple.  Much as it itself was a diffuse intelligence through its entire flesh.

“These Minute Ones are under my protection,” the Shoggoth said.

“They are not enemies,” the Present Mind replied.  “Until I see need, I will not harm them.”

“You will not harm them even if you see need.”  The Shoggoth spoke in the Higher Language now, commanding.

The Present Mind found itself in disorder, not just by the Command, but that this abomination even knew the Higher Language.  It could only barely resist obeying words spoken in it, undoing their effect upon its reality with great will.

“You are a stain upon existence that should not exist.”  It did not feel disgust, but it could weigh the variables, and see the truth.

“Yet I do,” the Shoggoth replied.

The Present Mind withdrew, the shards of its thoughts pulling away before the Shoggoth could try to command it again.

The last shard of mind to remove itself was unable to, as the Shoggoth constrained it, wrapping around it over multiple levels, holding it back.

“I cannot destroy you.  But I am capable of hurting you,” the Shoggoth said.

A part of the Present Mind broke off within the Shoggoth.  The severed part of the mind writhed, until the Present Mind cauterized its own line of thinking.

It did not reply; it could not without putting itself in danger again.  But it made a note of the danger.  It had not thought this being could threaten it in any way, but it had been wrong.  New calculations would have to be made.

The Shoggoth withdrew.  It had made its point.

---

< Ep 13 part 20 | Ep 13 part 22 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

Brooks watched as the porter drones went down the ramp, loading boxes of cargo and supplies onto the starlancar.

Kat Michell was supervising the loading, and not far beyond, Nadian was having a heated – if private – argument with Fergus.  Earlier they had stopped talking when he had come over, pointedly making it clear he was not to share in their discussion.

Which was fine, Brooks could already sense the dynamics here and could not say he was fond of them.

Nadian did not trust him, nor did Brooks in return.  No one seemed to trust Fergus.  And Kat only had trust in Nadian himself, the otherwise-tough woman practically hanging on his words.

The relationship reminded Brooks of the other, younger blonde who had been with Nadian when Brooks had first met him on Gohhi.  She appeared to be suspiciously absent here, though.

Kell, the only one who he might be able to count on, was standing still, gazing at the image of the temple.  He’d deigned to talk to Brooks about the mission, only telling him to be patient.

This was foolish, Brooks thought.  More and more he saw the absurdity of letting this be approached by people who were not organized, with no real support system.

Though, he realized, the Sapient Union had put itself into that support role.  If only Nadian and his people would give them at least a basic level of trust.  The head of his technical support team had told him that they were essentially sidelined by the Ghost‘s crew, who were constantly watching them.

But they needed the presence here.  There was no choice; letting Nadian go in alone would not guarantee that he hadn’t altered or manipulated what he found for his own ends.

Brooks had no interest in doing that, either, nor had he been ordered to.  But the Union had to have eyes in there on the first expedition.

He could have delegated the task, but he wouldn’t send someone else in unless he had to.

Fergus stomped away from Nadian, now going over to argue with Kat, who seemed eager for the confrontation.  As they began to yell, the argument now audible, Brooks could only feel amused.

“Why are my crates packed in the innermost hold?” Fergus yelled.  “I cannae access things as fast as Nadian!”

“Because I deemed it so,” Kat replied.  “It’s the weight.  It’s got to be stowed in a balanced way.”

“Horseshit!” Fergus said.  “By the Dark, my backers are not going to be pleased if they find they’ve been shorted because ye won’t let me get access to my things!”

“Your backers can go fuck themselves,” Kat replied shortly.

Brooks stood, coming over.  “Who are your backers?”

Fergus rounded on him, his fury dying down just slightly as he saw it was Brooks – who at least was not responsible for the packing of his goods.

“My backers,” he said, “Are my business.”

Brooks shrugged.  “I assumed it was not a secret piece of information.  Is it so controversial?”

Fergus was quiet a moment, then pointed over at Nadian.  “If he’s not telling, I’m not.  That’s the end of it.”

Brooks looked to Nadian, who shrugged, his expression disgusted, as if to say “I don’t know why he’s like this.”

“It’s time to start boarding,” Kat said.  “Or do you have a problem with that, Fergus?  You can wait until last, if you want.”

Her tone made clear how much she wanted to just leave him behind.

“You’d just love that, wouldn’t you?” he snapped back, stomping towards the hatch that led down into the starlancar.

“Fromm, time to get on,” Kat called.

The man looked nervous, and ready to argue.

“No argument,” Kat said.  “Just get your ass on!”

The man slunk onto the ship, and Kat headed on after him.

“Well, Captain, after you,” Nadian said with faux-politeness.

“Kell, we are boarding,” Brooks called.  The Shoggoth waited a moment longer before turning and coming over.  He said nothing, but walked down the ramp into the ship.  Fergus watched him, having stopped halfway down the ramp, but said nothing.

Brooks went down, finding that the cabin was surprisingly roomy.

The starlancar was a relatively large ship, a bit too big to be an easy shuttle.  The yacht-type vessel that had been purchased and converted into the Raven’s Ghost came with this lancar as a smaller pleasure cruiser for her intended audience – the ultra-wealthy.

The conversion for Nadian’s needs had been haphazard; much of the decoration had either never been installed or had been removed, and numerous functional pieces of tech were welded or bolted to the floor, ruining the flow of the space.

Brooks stepped between two different models of seismic scanners to move towards the ship’s control room.

He stepped in, eyeing the controls, but staying well back.

Kat was already in the captain’s chair, and gave him a suspicious glance.  “Don’t touch anything,” she said.

Nadian followed a moment later, and behind him was Fergus.  Fromm came in last, still seeming sullen.  Nadian took the co-pilot’s seat, and Fergus sat behind him.

“You don’t all need to stay in here,” Kat said acidly.  “Go strap in.”

“There’s enough chairs and straps in here,” Brooks replied evenly.

Kat glanced at Nadian, who just shrugged.  “Well, strap in here, then.  Just let us handle the ship.”

Brooks sat down, webbing himself in.  While they began the pre-flight checklist, he checked his suit’s integrity seals against vacuum.  In the equipment he’d brought were two proper spacesuits for he and Kell – though the Ambassador had dismissed his as pointless – but if there was an emergency his uniform would have to do.

“Preparing to detach,” Nadian said.  “Raven’s Ghost, confirm detachment at hardpoints.”

“Detachment confirmed,” the reply said.  “Godspeed, Black Feather.”

There was a thump, then the ship shook.

“Confirmed loose,” Kat said.  “Engaging ion engines, taking us away from the ship.”

The ship started forward, slowly.  Pleasure craft were not really for getting anywhere quickly, and ion thrusters were perfectly suited towards that goal, being more efficient in terms of propellant than most other conventional thrusters.

“I wish this thing had proper engines,” Kat said.

“You know how much that kind of refit costs?” Nadian replied.  “Besides, I happen to like ion ships.  Brooks, you ever flown an ion ship?”

“Yes,” Brooks replied.  “Used to fly some in the rings around Jincoczyk.”

“Seems like you’ve been everywhere and done everything,” Kat said dryly.  “If half the stories I hear about you are true.”

“Every spacer has,” Brooks said.  “And even the lies are true.”

Nadian laughed.  “Just no one’s called you out on your bullshit yet.”

“Exactly.  If you want the truth; yes, I really did fly an ion ship in the rings around Jincoczyk – for two weeks.  Just needed a paycheck to get by.”

“Why’d you leave?” Kat asked.  She didn’t sound as hostile.

“The pay was bad and the conditions even worse.”

Nadian shrugged reasonably.  “I’ve been there.”

“Bringing our heading in line with the temple,” Kat said.  “Transit should only take . . . fifty-five minutes.”

The stars shifted as the ship turned, and the temple came into view.

It already dominated the stars, filling their entire screen.

They fell into silence, just watching.  Against this scale, any words they might say seemed to feel inadequate.

Brooks realized that Kell was next to him; he had not heard the Ambassador enter the bridge, and he was simply standing, unaffected by their acceleration, slow as it was.

They drew ever closer to the entrance of the temple.

The shock of its scale wore off slowly, and Nadian broke the silence first.

“Fromm, you feeling anything funny about the place?”

The man considered a moment.  “It has a powerful air,” he said.

“So no?” Nadian replied.  “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I don’t feel anything,” Fromm admitted.

“We should have brought your CR,” Nadian muttered.

“I can do the job!” Fromm bit out.

“Yeah, but she was cuter,” Nadian replied.  Kat snorted, but out of annoyance or amusement was unclear.

“Look around the gate,” Fergus said, pointing.  “There’s a symbolic meaning there.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Nadian said.  “Whoever built this, they wanted to make something clear.  Too bad we can’t read the message.”

Brooks listened interestedly.  He knew a little about archeology, but he was no expert.

Fromm just seemed uncomfortable; aside from being a CR and protecting by his presence, he had no relevant skills to the situation and he knew it.

“Hands,” Fergus said, throwing his out to show how obvious it is.  “It’s a classic motif we see repeated across the planetary temples.”

“I’ve read your papers on that,” Kat replied.  “It’s pure speculation.  Just because you think it’s common symbolism doesn’t mean that that’s what it means here.”

“It is the best theory that-” Fergus began, raging.

“Quiet,” Nadian said suddenly.  “Something just changed.”

Kat changed tacts immediately, checking the systems.

“You’re right,” she said.  “The radiation levels have dropped.”

She raised her head, looking out.  “There is a bubble of safety around the temple, just like we thought.”

“Craton,” Brooks said.  “Confirm that we are in the safe zone.”

“That’s right, Captain,” Urle said.  “You’re outside our sphere now.  Probes had called it safe, but we’re keeping our distance for now.”

“Keep it up,” Brooks said.  “Go ahead and launch our shuttle.”

Nadian turned sharply.  “Another shuttle?”

“Yes,” Brooks replied.  “We’re sending our own team in.”

“What?” Nadian demanded.  “No, that was not the deal!  We agreed-“

“We agreed,” Brooks said, raising his voice over the other man, “That you would have first entrance and that we would not interfere with your mission.  All of that is still true.  But we will have a second team setting down just inside, to run our own tests.”

Nadian stared at him, incredulous.  “You lying son of a-“

“You do not own this relic temple,” Brooks told him.  “You will go down in history as leading the first expedition into it.  But the Sapient Union will conduct its own investigation into the temple, following after you.”

Nadian turned back, seething.  Kat glanced back at Brooks.  She didn’t say anything, but she did look angry.

Dark, Brooks thought.  Was every step going to be this way?

He glanced at the other two members of Nade’s party.  Fergus’s face seemed eternally set in angry and unhappy, and Fromm just looked regretful.  The reality of the expedition was getting to the man.

He looked then to Kell, whose face showed no emotion whatsoever.

Brooks shifted his gaze back out.  They could no longer see any sides of the frame or even the floor of the temple below.

In front of them yawned a black abyss.  There was no starlight to even give a hint of scale.

He felt the urge to recoil, as if they were about to strike a solid surface right in front of them.

Above that primal fear sat another one; why was it all so massive?

The station was on the scale of some of the largest space structures any species had ever built – and never once had they been of one solid piece.

It was not possible through anything but the trickiest of mass-manipulating engineering.  Tensile strength and other ways of measuring the properties of materials no longer meant anything.  At this scale, all known materials behaved like liquids.

Fergus spoke, his voice soft.

“‘Let us build these cities and surround them with walls and towers, gates and bars. The land is still ours because we have sought the Lord our God; we have sought Him, and He has given us rest on every side.’ So they built . . . and prospered.”

He turned to look at the others.  “But these bastards didn’t prosper.  No one home.  What the hell could have wiped out beings who could have built this?”

“We could never build something like this,” Kat said.  “Whoever they were, they were so far beyond us that we can’t imagine it.”

“No,” Brooks said.  He saw looks of skepticism and annoyance flicker to him.  He didn’t flinch.  “It’s hard, but not impossible.  I’m not trying to argue here, only give a sense of scale.  With active electromagnetic support you could stabilize even at this size.”

He pointed out.  “There’s no practical reasons I know of to build a place this large.  I can’t rule out technology or purposes beyond those we know, but it seems to me that this was built on this scale just as a sign of their greatness.”

“With that kind of technology,” Nadian noted.  He clearly was alone among the group in believing Brooks.  “They must need an incredible power source.  Maybe even something as dangerous as antimatter or miniature black holes.”

“No one’s that stupid,” Brooks said immediately.  Both forms of power generation were possible, but were just more trouble than they were worth.  The potential dangers far exceeded even the hottest of fusion drives.
“I’ve seen some strange things in these temples.  And we can’t rule out that they had methods of stabilizing those things.”
Brooks gave a skeptical look, and Nadian shrugged.  “Just saying – we need to be careful.”

“We have to be able to see the other side by now,” Fergus said.  “It’s not so far we shouldn’t be able to see it.”

They had moved quite a distance inside.

“I’m going to start slowing us down,” Kat said, uneasily.  “I don’t know why we can’t see anything, but I don’t want a wall showing up on us without enough time to brake.”

“No,” Nadian said.  “No, let the ship keep going.  We’ve got some emergency brakes built onto this thing.  Be prepared for an emergency stop – be ready to vent every bit of reaction mass in the brakes, just so long as it doesn’t crush us.”

“But why keep going?” Fergus asked.  “We could land and make our way-“

“Do you really want to cover all this on foot?  Even with cars it could take days.  No,” he shook his head.  “Brooks is right.  This place was meant to awe.  This antechamber is massive just to make us feel that awe, but they wouldn’t want anyone crashing in it.  We’ll see the other side in time, so let’s wait and get closer to the back.”

“If we do before it’s too late,” Kat grumbled.

---

< Ep 13 part 15 | Ep 13 part 17 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

This strand had far too many errors, Alexander thought as he looked at his work.

In front of him, embedded in a liquid crystal block, was an actual strand of nucleotides, a testbed for the plant he was developing.  On the screen below it was the digital version he had originally designed.

They should match, but they did not.

The DNA strand was impossibly small and delicate, and when stretched out as it was right now, it was just over a meter long.

The human genome was twice the length, but the beauty of writing your own DNA from scratch was that you could trim out a whole lot of fat.

Which was tricky, of course.  Genetics was convoluted, to put it mildly.  Genes could often pull double or triple duty in different cases, multiple genes would be involved in even the simplest tasks, and redundancy often existed to ensure a robust resistance to damage and mutation.

Damage which was always inevitable, he thought.  DNA suffered frequent damage, and no matter how many repair proteins you put in, errors could occur.

Yet, to his great frustration, this strand was far, far more corrupted than it should be.

It would be easy to blame space radiation, he thought.  Some cosmic rays reached even into the Craton, and even the occasional unlucky neutrino could cause his physical strand here to suffer damage.

But the Craton was heavily shielded.  A few stray particles could not account for the damage to the physical strand that he was reading now.

Several minutes ago, he’d told the computer to copy the physical strand as a new layer, which he’d named MistakesWereMade1, and to run viability tests.

Which, scanning the entire thing, simulating it as an actual cell and then putting that sim into a larger sim to try and figure out if it could work was a pretty big ask.  He’d been waiting several minutes already, and it seemed to be taking too long.

“Current viability outlook?” he asked.

It fed him the data; it didn’t look good.  While it was still running tests, in almost no simulations was this DNA able to create a functioning plant, and even in cases where it managed to do something it was horribly stunted and . . . mutant.  Its fruit was even toxic to human life.

“Stop the sim,” he told the computer with a sigh.  “This is useless.  What the hell went wrong?”

His system could not answer him on that, only projecting a sad-face emoji.

😦

“What caused these mutations?  Were we hit by something odd?”  He should have been told if some stray cosmic ray came along, even one that was harmless to people, just because of this exact eventuality.

Checking the logs, he saw nothing recent.  Checking general radiation levels, both externally and in various parts of the ship, showed no results either.

“Dark,” he muttered, putting his hands together and staring at the strand.

It was sort of a time capsule in the crystal block.  It carried marks of every radioactive particle that passed through it in a physical way.  Proof that something had happened.

So why didn’t the computer system register anything odd?

He opened the history banks.  In here were prior scans of the DNA strand, going back over two years.

Almost twenty million iterations were saved in that time frame, far more than he could look through.

Many past errors had been caught and fixed before, but the system had recorded them.  Granted, this was worse than it had ever been, but if he could find some kind of pattern, maybe he could figure out what was causing the problem to begin with.

“Run a scan,” he said.  “Look for incidents of major errors and when they were introduced.  I want to check for related variables that could be causing these consistent errors.”

After giving a few more details to the computer, it began its check of the data.  This would take awhile, too, but not as long as the sims.

In the meantime, he checked if there were any replies on the ship’s research message board, asking if anyone else had experienced similar problems.

There were only a few other long-term genetic studies going on.  Only a few others noted some problems, but nothing like what he was seeing.

Hm.  Well, he sometimes worked from his home office, too, even transferring his prototype DNA strand there and back.  He’d have to figure that into the data.

A call came in.

“Alexander,” he said by way of greeting.

The HUD said it was Father Sair, and he belatedly spoke again.  “Oh, hello, Father!”

“Hello,” the Father’s voice came, sounding slightly amused.

Sair was younger than he was, and they had both found some amusement in Alexander always calling him by his title.  But no matter how often the Father insisted that Alexander only call him by name, he could not make himself do that.

The man may be his junior in years, but in every way that really counted he was his senior.

“I hope I have not called at a bad time,” Sair said.

“Ah, well, I am quite busy with work, Father, but I always can make time to talk to you.”

“Thank you, though you afford me too much, Alex.”  Sair paused.  “Still, perhaps this is bad timing on my part, as I was hoping to enlist your help.  I am planning a ceremony for tomorrow, you see – the discovery of this Star Temple is a major theological event for us.”

“Of course!” Alexander said.  Reality crashed in on him almost immediately.  “I mean – I understand how important this must be!  I don’t . . . we’re not going to be holding an event in the temple, are we?”

Sair’s voice came out with the barest hint of bitterness.  “No.  The Captain will not allow that.”

Alexander felt his insides squirm a little.  It was reasonable, given the unknown nature of the place and the potential dangers.  When the Father got this way, though, he never knew what to say.

“I’m very sorry, though, Father, I kind of am in the middle of important work.  If it weren’t about making better food plants adapted to the colony worlds I’d be willing to stop, but this is . . . you know, important.”

His words felt hollow in his ears no matter how much logic they held.

But Father Sair’s reply was calm.  “Of course, Alexander.  I do understand – what you are doing is vital work.”

Alexander felt his stomach unclench slightly.  “Thank you, Father.”

“But it is almost break time, yes?  And as I recall, you do not usually eat a lunch.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, even if we do no work, perhaps you would simply walk with me for a time?”

Alexander smiled.  “I would be honored, Father.”

---

< Ep 13 part 10 | Ep 13 part 12 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

---

“Apollonia Nor, you should be getting some sleep.”

Jaya’s voice was too much like a nagging mother for Apple’s taste – at least what bad sitcoms had taught her mothers were like.

She regretted even taking the call.  She could have pretended to be asleep, laying in bed when Jaya had called.  But, Apollonia supposed, Jaya must have known she was awake if she had called at all.

“I’m studying,” she said.  “Wanna . . . brush off any cobwebs, you know?”

She could hear the frown in Jaya’s voice.  “Dr. Y and I made an itinerary for you for the week leading up to your test, and for good reason.  With a proper sleeping schedule, study hours, and diet, your brain will be at its peak efficiency for-“

“Yeah, I know.  You two built it off my biometrics and all that, and it absolutely will help me on my test,” Apollonia replied.  “And I appreciate it.  I really do.”  She actually hated it, and the idea that they’d been analyzing her brain so thoroughly, the idea that she could be so easily predicted . . . but she wasn’t going to say that.  “But I’m prone to flights of fancy.”

“Like your flight with the Captain today.”

Apollonia stared at the ceiling above her bed as Jaya spoke, one knee crooked upwards with the other over it.

“Yeah.  What of it?”

“You should have been exercising,” Jaya told her.  “It will help-“

“Jaya.  Thank you for your help, but I think I will get some sleep now.”

Jaya went quiet a moment.  “Well, that is good.  Remember, your test will be at 1100 hours in office suite seven.”

“Does it really have to be tomorrow?” Apollonia asked.  She’d asked before, but deluded herself into hoping that asking enough might get it to change.  “It seems like I could use more time.”

“If you don’t want to wait another year, yes.  While there’s some leeway, we’re nearing the point where it will be too late for you to get into academy classes for this cycle.”  Jaya took a breath.  “Just do not be late tomorrow.  Office seven!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be late.  I wrote it on the back of my hand, along with the answers to the test.  Oops, should I not have said that?”

Jaya snorted slightly, but just by voice Apollonia could not tell if it was amusement or annoyance.

“Good night, Apollonia.  Rest well.”

“Niiiiight,” Apollonia replied, as the call ended.

She remained gazing at the ceiling above.

It was not that interesting, but it eased her over-wrought mind.

She’d finished studying not long before Jaya had called; mathematics, physics, theory of command, ethics . . .  A whole slew of science fields on top of it all.  She hadn’t even gotten to history or economics, which were huge in their own right.

Once her brain had lost the ability to focus, she’d called a stop to it.  Not that she’d felt much like she had been focusing in the first place, but even just looking over the lessons again was good, right?

Her mind left her studies behind, looking back instead at the rest of her day.

The whole airplane thing with Brooks had been fun.  Cut short, but fun.

Brooks, she thought wryly.  The man had such an air of authority that even off-duty, in her head, she could only think of him by his surname.

Ian?  That seemed a weird way to think of him.

Her mind moved on, in the way that minds wander, coming to Cathal.  She found herself smiling thinking of his calm.  He just seemed . . . friendly?  And non-threatening but in a way that wasn’t pathetic.

Trustworthy, that was the word she was looking for.

She didn’t really find herself so interested in his religion.  She hadn’t ever had faith, so why start now?  And this stuff about how we were tiny and insignificant – it was the opposite of inspiring.

Maybe she could give it a shot, though?  He’d been really patient, never pushed anything.

The thought of spending more time with him was nice.

A ping came on her system, a ship update.  They came in regularly, starting with the most important news and working down to things like “hallway x was closed due to pipe maintenance”.

Glancing at the headline, she saw that the ship had a new priority mission.

She rolled over on her stomach to look at the screen better.  This kind of update always seemed to turn into a big deal.  The last time it had been Ko . . . the time before that the pirates.

There were scant details.  That boded even worse.  Only that they were being routed to . . . well, it didn’t name a system.  Only an approximate coordinate designation that meant nothing to her.

“Tell me the nearest star system to this point,” she asked her system.

It came up with “109 Piscium”.  A G-type star a hundred and eight light years from Earth.  They were forty light-years away at their current position.

They’d arrive late tomorrow, by ship time.

Hmph.

She already had a bad feeling about this one.  It wasn’t even in the Sapient Union.

Neither had Ko or its star system, but it was kind of odd to be heading to the middle of nowhere to reach nothing.  What was out that way?

She scanned through lists of nearby stars.  Nothing important leaped out at her.  It was not near the fuzzy contact lines of Union and Glorian space, nowhere near Gohhi or the Aeena or anybody.

But oh.  It was near the Terris system . . .  She shuddered.  Only five light years away.  That seemed too close for her tastes.

Her system came up with something under the ‘persons of note’ list.  An itinerary filed with Gohhi central public records indicated that Nadian Farland’s ship the Raven’s Ghost was in the region . . .

Nadian Farland!  The adventurer?  She sat up, excitement welling.  “Oh damn,” she said out loud.  “This might be interesting.”

If Nadian Farland was there, maybe she could finagle her way into whatever was going on.

And, she thought, buy herself a few more days before she had to take her damn test.

---

< Ep 13 part 5 | Ep 13 part 7 >

Other-Terrestrial
Season 1, Episode 13
“Dark Star”
by Nolan Conrey

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here!

---

*******

The sun was dimmed as ten thousand vessels ascended into space.

They were staggered out, so from Ham Sulp’s point of view they formed a sheet of moving dots, slowly shrinking in size.

Their engines were in full burn, ascending them at speeds that would, at most times, be considered unwise.  In just a few moments most of the ships had escaped the atmosphere and shrunk from sight.

“We’re almost loaded!” he heard his first mate yell.

He turned and looked at the short woman as she raced towards him.  “One-thousand and twenty-seven, all we can manage!” she said.

“Not all,” he replied.  “Get some sitting in the bathrooms, those seats can function for liftoff, and we can pack on ten more.”

She frowned.  “I’m worried about the air.  It’s gonna get real heavy quick with this many.”

“Crank the air scrubbers to eleven,” he told her.

His first mate nodded, even if she didn’t like that, and yelled for ten more.

There were guards at the edge of the air fields, who pointed to ten people.  They let them through the cordon, as people stood in terror, yet with enough control not to be rushing the fields.

The guards knew they’d never get to leave.  Because they were never going to get everyone off Terris, and they wouldn’t abandon their posts until there was no one else left.

One of the ground crew came up, a woman with the long hair of a terrestrial, which was flying in all directions in her haste.

“I’ve got the next group staged,” she said.  “If you think you can come back for another run.”

“We’re starting pre-lift,” Sulp told her.  His eyes happened to meet hers, and they locked a moment.  She was from Terris, had always known this world.  And he, he was from the spacer fleets.  They were so different, but their eyes were the same color.

He didn’t know anything about her, but his system told him that she was Lieutenant Sarah Lachmann.

“I’ll be back,” he told her.  “I think we can get in one more run.”

The last ten packed themselves onto the ship, and he had to pick his way carefully through the rows of seats to get up to the cockpit of the small shuttle.

People pressed aside as best they could, but they were packed in like sardines.  The trip was only up into space, where they’d dock with a heavy transport.  The people would disembark, they’d refuel, and then they’d head back down for the next group.

This shuttle was good for ten more drops through atmo, he thought.  More than they’d get.

Sitting down in the pilot’s chair, he flipped the air scrubbers to an overdrive feature to take carbon dioxide out of the air.  It’d burn them out fast, but they’d last for a few more trips, and that was all that mattered.

He almost laughed.  Never would such an act have been made in his home fleet.  Any Spacer worth his water weight would rather die than waste air filters.  It was too selfish, it would impact those who lived on beyond you.

But sometimes, in a larger context, you sacrificed in the short term.

“Everyone into liftoff chairs,” he announced.  When the system confirmed there were no errant people, he began the warm-up sequence.

His first mate slipped into her seat.  She was a Spacer, too, but he had only met her a few weeks ago.  She was, like any Spacer, trustworthy with regards to the ship, and that was all that mattered right now.

“Bad idea to burn out those scrubbers,” she muttered.

Not that long from the home fleet, he mused.

“Noted,” he told her.

She did not say anything else; it was only a waste of oxygen.  The ship shuddered and began to rumble as the powerful boosters fired off.

Down below, somewhere, Lieutenant Lachmann, the guards, and the others awaiting evacuation were watching them, hoping that this shuttle, or another like it, would have time to come back.

G-forces began to crush him into his seat.  This wasn’t that bad compared to what he had pulled in the past, and he didn’t even lose vision.  Taking sharp breaths and clenching his body against the g-forces, his fingers still worked the control boards near his hands, getting the computer to plot their course to the carriers.

On the other side of Terris, millions of kilometers out, were the fleets.  They were facing down the . . . anomaly that was fast approaching.

The reality of it still had not settled in for him.  A lifeform of deep space the size of a planet . . . it didn’t even make sense.  What the hell could fleet weapons do against something that big?

Maybe slow it down, he thought.  Every non-combat ship that had gone towards the thing had been disabled quickly.  It didn’t seem to follow a logical orbital path, moving with will, though how it moved was unknown.

His eyes unfocused.  People had said sometimes that when they looked in the sky they could see the thing.  But that was impossible; it was approaching from the other side of the world.

But he, too, could see something in space.  It was not . . . an actual object.  The thing would be visible, and it would look almost like a planet.

What he saw now was more like a void.  A void of blackness so deep that it swallowed even the black of space.

“Comm from the carrier,” his co-pilot said.

He started in his seat.  The g-forces had slackened minutes ago and he hadn’t even noticed.

“Let’s get docked and dump off this lot so we can-“

“No,” his co-pilot said, her eyes going wide.  “It’s a call for retreat.”

Sulp tuned into the call.

“. . . fleets are in full retreat.  The object code-named Leviathan has not slowed, and has accelerated its movement towards Terris.  Repeat, there are to be no new drops to the surface of Terris.  Time to impact is stated to be less than twenty minutes.  All shuttles are to meet up with their mother ships or else to begin a burn along heading . . .”

He ripped off his headset, staring at his co-pilot.  Her eyes were wide, but she said nothing.

---

< Ep 12 Epilogue | Ep 13 part 2 >