Burnt Worlds (36 page)

“Open it,” she said.

Without any air, the opening door made no sound.
 
There was only a slight vibration that they felt through the deck and the handrails they held.

Beyond the open door lay the contrasts of open space:
 
the inky darkness of the heavens, lit from below by sunlight reflected off of Planet Seven.
 
The shapes and lights outside the shuttle slowly moved, as the small vessel reoriented itself in space.

Directly in front of them, casting a long shadow over the shuttle, lay the vast, battered hulk of the cylinder ship.
 
They were even with its mangled bottom end, and its full length stretched above them, far out of their field of view. The cylinder still held its swirled black gloss, but there was no movement in its surface, no shimmering.
 
Dark black pockmarks, deep dents and gashes marred the otherwise smooth hull of the alien ship.
 
The shape still held menace, and Atwell became aware of the loud, frequent breaths she was taking inside her suit.

Turning her helmeted head to look behind her, she saw that the other crewmembers, with the exception of Lee, were all similarly agape at the sight of the alien ship.
 
No armour, no wall, not even air separated them from the massive vessel.

The pilot’s voice crackled in her earpiece.
 
“Hawk to passengers: now matching the target’s rotation, over.”

One of the crewmembers spoke across the squad’s channel.
 
“They’re calling themselves ‘Hawk’ now?”

“Last time it was ‘Falcon’,” said another.

“Shut it,” said Lee.

Atwell smiled, toggling the channel on her console.
 
“Hawk, this is Economy Class.
 
Go ahead and manoeuvre.
 
Out.”

The shuttle trembled slightly, first from below and then from the left, as it began to adjust its orientation and movement to match that of the alien ship.
 
As they rotated along with the massive cylinder, they came out of its shadow.
 
The brilliant light from the star washed into the shuttle’s small cabin, flooding everything with a painful blue-white light and impossibly dark shadows.
 
Six visors darkened simultaneously, shielding human eyes from the damaging bright light.

“Shiny,” said someone.

“Not telling you again,” said Lee.

Atwell poked again at her wrist console.
 
A different channel indicator lit up, along with the ‘private’ indicator.

“Atwell, you good?” came the Captain’s voice.
 
She knew he was trying to be calm, but could hear the barely-masked excitement in his voice.

“Aye, sir.
 
Anything from our cylindrical friend here?”

“Not a peep.
 
We’ve been in this system, watching it, for six hours now.
 
Nothing.
 
Dead as pork.
 
You and your team still good?”

“Aye sir,” she replied.
 
She tried to hide her nervousness.
 
“Though I’d like it reflected in the ship’s log that this is officially the craziest thing I’ve ever volunteered for.
 
I expect the squad agrees.”

Even through the tinny, distorted speakers in her helmet, she could still hear the smile in the Captain’s voice.
 
“So noted.
 
Proceed at your own pace, there’s no schedule.
 
We’ve got your back.”

“Aye aye, sir.
 
The Tassali gave me a quick blessing before I got on the shuttle, so between that and
Borealis
we’ve got all the backup we could ask for.”

“Understood.
 
Vaya con Dios.
 
Captain out.”

Poking at her console again, Atwell changed channels. “Economy Class to Hawk.
 
Take us closer when you’re ready.”

“Roger that.”

The massive shape of the alien ship hung in space before them, against the backdrop of planet, moon, sun and stars that slowly rotated behind it.
 
With the merest tremble in the deck below their feet, the shuttle began to slide gently sideways toward the bottom of the cylinder.
 
It appeared to grow larger in their field of vision, expanding to fill their view and hide everything behind it.

As they got closer, the marks on its surface became clearer.
 
Dents big enough for a person to climb into, ten-meter-long gouges scarred across the hull, their edges jagged with the ugly furrows of metal dug up from below.

Wherever the surface was intact, it had the same, glistening, oily-black sheen.
 
And as they moved closer, they could see that even this clear surface was marred by hundreds of small dents, scratches and marks, the story of centuries of collisions with smaller objects and debris sharing its orbit.

“Good god,” breathed one of the crewmembers.
 
“How big
is
that thing?”

“Huge,” said Atwell.
 
“About forty metres in diameter and two hundred high.
 
Looks like it’s had a dozen metres knocked off its bottom end.”

She touched her wrist again, opening another private channel.
 
“Hawk, this is Atwell.”

“Yes, sir?”

“If this thing wakes up, just go.
 
Don’t wait for us, got it?”

“We’ve never left a passenger behind, sir.
 
Not going to start today.”

She paused.
 
“Thanks for that,” she said quietly.
 
“But better some of us than none of us.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Lieutenant slid her thumb over her console again, closing the private channel.

The shuttle had moved sideways up to the side of the alien ship.
 
The vast wall of oily black metal, covered in scars, stretched as far as they could see to the left and right and above them.
 
Below, the wall ended abruptly at a jagged tear.
 
The wall began to glide upwards past them, as the shuttle descended along the side of the cylinder, all the way to its bottom.

As the shuttle slid down past the bottom of the alien vessel, it slowed to a stop.
 
Above them, they could see the jagged underside of the alien ship, a ceiling of ragged edges and tortured metal that receded into the distance.
 
There was no sign of an interior; the alien ship appeared to be entirely solid, made of concentric layers of metre-thick metal, wrapped around each other like rings on a tree.
 
The bottom had been sheared off by some unimaginably violent force, leaving concentric rings of torn metal, forming rows of jagged toothlike shards, all stretched, deformed and torn away from them.

“Hawk,” Atwell said as calmly as she could.
 
“Let’s go underneath, nice and slow.
 
Toward the centre.”

“Hawk here; understood.”

She glanced at the crewmembers around her.
 
They all stared out the open door of the shuttle, each with one or both hands on grab rails above their heads, their weapons slung across their backs.
 
Whenever the shuttle rotated into shadow, their visors de-tinted, revealing the grim looks on their faces.

“Is everyone’s camera on?” she asked.
 
“We’re recording everything, right?”

Helmets nodded in silent reply.

“
Borealis
, you getting all this?”

There was a moment’s silence, long enough to make Atwell begin to wonder.

“We are, Lieutenant,” said the Captain.
 
She was thankful for how reassuring he sounded.

The shuttle continued to move across the underside of the alien ship, matching the slow tumbling rotation of the massive cylinder.
 
Inside the passenger compartment of the shuttle, six suited people stood at the hatch, peering out and upwards, studying the torn and ripped underside of the ship.
 
Its massive metal rings were pushed back, bent, pressed together in some places and pulled apart in others, leaving small gaps between the layers.

“Well,” said someone, “we can tell how old it is.”

Ring after ring went by overhead, rows of tortured and jagged metal teeth sliding past.
 
Atwell felt her neck begin to cramp from craning upward.
 

“Is that the middle?” said Lee.

The rings were smaller here, their curvature easily visible.
 
“There,” said one of the crewmembers, pointing.

Smaller and tighter rings lay ahead and slightly to their right, where the innermost layers were wrapped around each other.
 
The central ring was a thick metal tube, its walls two metres thick, with a small hollow gap in the centre.
 
The centre ring was pulled outward and away, the metal stretched and sheared, leaving only a small puckered metal maw at its centre, surrounded by a lip of sharp, black metal.

“Hawk, see that?” she asked.
 
“Get us there.”

“Hawk here, we see it.
 
Will do.”

The shuttle altered its course slightly, sliding sideways until it was directly underneath the central opening.
 
With a tiny jerk, the small craft rotated until its open side hatch faced up at the bottom of the alien ship, the jagged edges of the central hole less than a metre from the crewmembers who stood in the shuttle and stared at it.
 
As the alien ship and the shuttle slowly rotated and orbited together, the changing angle of the incoming starlight caused the shadows of the twisted metal to twist and bend around them.
 
Atwell found it slightly disorienting, and focused on the nearest edge of the alien ship, a sharp spike of metal within arm’s reach in front of her.

“I’m…,” she hesitated, “I’m going to touch it.
 
Let me know if it does anything.”
 
A quick flurry of acknowledgements came through the comm channels.
 

Slowly, she reached out her gloved hand, lightly touching the oily-looking metal of the alien ship.
 
Nothing happened, and she noticed her own surprise.
 
She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it had probably involved fear and panic.

“So,” said one of the crewmembers behind her.
 
“No kaboom?”

“No kaboom today,” said one of the others.
 
“Maybe kaboom tomorrow.”

“That does it,” said Lee.
 
“You two shut the fuck up, or so help me…”

“Shutting up.”

Atwell leaned in closer, examining the hole in the centre of the thick metal tube.
 
Activating the flashlight in her suit’s wrist, she shone it in the hole and looked.
 
The same dark metal surfaces lined the inside of the tube, the narrow shaft stretching far off into the distance - upwards, inside the alien ship - as far as they could see.

“So,” said Atwell.
 
“These things have an inside.
 
Let’s go see who’s home.
 
Hawk, turn off the gravity back here, please.”

“Roger that.”

Atwell, Lee and the crew held tightly on to the handrails as their feet lifted off the shuttle’s deck and they began to float in space, inside the shuttle.
 
Several of them put their hands out to steady each other.

She started to think about what she was doing, then realised that thinking was the sort of thing she shouldn’t be doing just now.
 
Pulling herself forward by the handrail, she let go and floated toward the opening in the underside of the alien ship.
 
She carefully guided herself past the sharp edges of metal, and passed neatly into the metre-wide shaft.

The white light from her wrist-lamp shone ahead of her, bouncing off the glistening sheen of the sides of the tube.
 
Using her fingertips against the walls, she gently guided herself forward, further inside the alien vessel.
 
Before long, additional lights followed her as the crewmembers entered the tube, casting wild, sharp shadows on the walls of the passage.

Her comm system beeped anxiously at her.
 
Allowing herself to float unguided up the shaft, she glanced at her wrist display.
 
“Lee,” she said.
 
“I’ve lost comms channels to
Borealis
and the shuttle.
 
This thing must be blocking us.”

“Same here, sir.”

“Okay,” she said, watching the oily wall slide slowly by as she thought.
 
“Whoever’s at the back, stay at the opening, so we can keep a relay open.”

“That would be me, sir,” said Lee.
 
“Too close in here to pass anyone, so I’ll head back to where we came in.
 
I’ll make sure the feeds are good.”

“Okay, thank you Lee.”

Atwell looked down behind her, at the bobbing lights of the crewmembers coming up after her.
 
Tilting her head the other way, she could see the tunnel continue ahead of them for as far as her light could reach.
 
The black wall slid by only a few inches in front of her mask, and the back of her suit periodically bumped against the wall behind her.
 
“I hope no one’s claustrophobic,” she muttered.

Movement was smooth and effortless; she only needed the occasional push of fingertips on the walls to keep herself moving smoothly up the shaft.

“Twenty-five metres,” said Lee.
 
“I’m communicating with the ship, and our data is all coming through fine.
 
All except yours, sir.
 
Your comms okay?”

The Lieutenant glanced at her wrist, and made a face inside her mask.
 
“It’s complaining about needing to reboot.
 
I’m not touching it.
 
I don’t want anything else to crap out.”