The starship Gabriel’s bridge, non-system space
The eight days had dragged interminably and everyone aboard the Gabriel breathed a sigh of relief when finally they were summoned to the bridge for the last jump. Their destination was an unclassified and unexplored system in the galaxy’s halo which contains some of the oldest stars in the Milky Way. Formed around fourteen billion years ago, they sit outside the clusters normally grouped within the spiral arms and, according to the GDA, just too distant and spread out to be of any economic value. It seemed even the Ancients hadn’t bothered with these regions, only seeding the human genome into the more densely grouped spiral arms of the Milky Way. No known bi-pedal races had ever been recorded originating in the vast depths of the halo.
‘Is that it?’ grumbled Andy, as the system in question revealed itself on the holomap. ‘We’ve come all this way for that pile of rocks?’
‘Hmm,’ grunted Ed. ‘Doesn’t look much of a holiday hotspot does it?’
‘Nothing habitable in there at all,’ said Pol. ‘Not for us anyway.’
Ed looked over at Phil, who was piloting the ship on this occasion.
‘Can you jump just outside the system and then navigate in?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ replied Phil, quickly replotting the jump co-ordinates.
‘I want to have a good look around before they have any idea we’re here,’ Ed continued.
‘That’s if they’re here at all,’ mumbled Andy.
‘They’re here all right,’ said Pol, glancing across from her floating screens. ‘There’s movement almost everywhere.’
‘But they’re just rocks,’ said Callon. ‘I can’t detect any ships at all.’
‘Yes, but they’re navigated rocks, just like the comet we saw,’ said Pol. ‘There’s thousands of big ones, small ones, all sizes really and all being piloted, mostly around the planet-sized bodies.’
‘There’s no movement around that planet though,’ said Callon, highlighting one of the bigger darker spheres. ‘Why are they ignoring that one?’
Phil gunned the cloaked ship into the system, and while Pol concentrated her powerful array on the rock traffic, Callon was able to get a much better survey of the dead world. The closer they got, the better her resolution.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, sending the latest image across to Ed’s display.
‘Well, well,’ he murmured, his eyes widening.
‘What is it?’ asked Linda, craning her neck to see.
‘Evidence of oceans and rivers,’ he said. ‘This planet used to have an atmosphere.’
‘What, like Mars?’ she replied.
‘Yeah, but a lot older and…fuck!’
Everyone glanced up from what they were doing as Ed didn’t use that word very often.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ Callon asked.
‘Shit,’ said Andy. ‘Is that the remains of a city?’
‘Well it certainly ain’t a natural formation,’ said Ed, excitedly.
‘There’s another one,’ said Callon, putting the image up on the main holomap and pointing. ‘And another, a really big one.’
‘We need to go there,’ said Ed, glancing at Phil.
‘On the way, boss.’
They all watched transfixed during the journey into the system as more detail became available. This had been a very densely populated world a long time ago. Although over the vast spread of time, the cities had crumbled virtually to dust, the outlines from space were still quite unmistakable.
‘There’s nothing left standing in any of the cities,’ said Callon. ‘Just the shadow of the layout.’
‘Except for that,’ said Andy, pointing at something sticking up in the centre of the largest one.
As the resolution improved, it quickly became apparent it was a low stone arch.
‘Anything paying us any attention?’ Ed asked.
‘No unusual movements,’ said Pol. ‘Well, no more unusual than thousands of flying rocks already is.’
‘Locating the comet will be virtually impossible amongst that lot, especially after all this time,’ said Linda.
‘What are we going to call these bugs?’ asked Andy. ‘We’re not going to be able to ask them are we?’
‘Halopods,’ said Phil, without looking up from his flight screen.
Everyone glanced at Phil, before turning their attention to Ed.
‘Sounds pretty good to me,’ he said.
‘Could be an old Wyndham novel,’ said Andy. ‘The Day of the Halopods.’
He laughed at his own joke, immediately realising he was the only one doing so and quickly shut up.
‘Are we planning on landing on that thing?’ he said, quickly changing the subject.
Ed raised his eyebrows and turned to Pol.
‘It doesn’t have an atmosphere anymore, gravity’s point six two Earth, so you could,’ she said. ‘So long as the surface can take the weight and you would obviously need to wear suits.’
‘Or take one of the shuttles down,’ said Phil.
Ed rubbed his chin in thought.
‘I really want to know who used to live here and what happened to them. It might be pertinent considering these bugs are taking an interest in us,’ he said.
‘We could take the Cartella down there,’ said Andy. ‘It’s the lightest ship we have and there’s half a dozen Theo suits in its lockers.’
Ed stood and turned to Phil.
‘Slip the Gabriel into a low orbit and have an embedded emergency jump programmed just in case we’re rumbled,’ he said.
‘No heroics or wandering too far,’ said Linda, giving Ed one of her don’t argue stares. ‘You get whatever evidence you need and you get the hell back here, is that clear?’
‘Absolutely,’ he said, a little enthusiastically, giving Andy a wide-eyed expression that Linda couldn’t see. ‘Andrew, fancy a stroll on a dead planet?’
‘Do you think they had any pubs down there?’ Andy asked, standing.
‘If they did, I think the beer might be a little bit past its sell by date now,’ said Phil, not looking up from the helm icons as he slotted the cloaked five-hundred-metre starship into orbit.
‘The same goes for you, Andrew Faux,’ growled Linda, watching him steely-eyed as he walked to the tube lift.
‘Mister trustworthy, me,’ Andy replied.
‘Hmm,’ she grunted. ‘Rayl might still be here if you were.’
Andy froze with his back to Linda, a wide-eyed expression on his face and his fists clenching and unclenching.
‘What the hell is that supposed to…?’
Ed leant forward, grabbed Andy by the belt and dragged him into the lift. Both disappeared down towards the hangars in the blink of an eye.
‘Don’t let her rile you,’ Ed said calmly. ‘Linda and Rayl were very close and she misses her.’
‘Not as fucking much as me,’ Andy snapped, kicking the side of the lift.
‘We all know that,’ Ed replied. ‘We also know you didn’t do anything to warrant what she did. She’s the one with the issues. They most probably stem from the horrors she witnessed on her father’s ship shortly before we found her.’
They arrived at the hangar deck and strode left towards the port hangar.
‘D’you think she’ll ever be at peace with that?’ Andy asked.
Ed shrugged.
‘I’m no psychologist, but I do know PTSD can rear its ugly head in many forms and sometimes take a lot of counselling.’
They entered the port hangar and made straight towards the Cartella parked backing onto the right-hand wall.
‘She’s never had any and would never talk about it, well, not with me anyway,’ said Andy, as he opened the side airlock.
‘Perhaps she’ll get the medical help she needs in the navy,’ said Ed. ‘Although knowing her she’ll just hide it away again.’
‘Am I piloting?’ Andy asked.
‘Yeah, okay, it’ll give you something to concentrate on instead of dwelling in the past,’ said Ed, slapping Andy on the back.
‘Do I do that?’
‘Just a bit. It’s been a year now, Andrew.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Right, come on, take me to that archway, let’s see what happened to this planet.’