The Cartella, approaching uncharted planet in the halo
There was still the thinnest of atmospheres around the dead world, as Andy piloted the Cartella down towards the site of one of the larger cities. It barely warmed the heat shield at all, enabling him to keep the nose down and their destination in sight.
‘It gets bigger and bigger doesn’t it,’ said Andy, as they approached and watched the vast sprawling and crumbled metropolis stretch away to the horizon in every direction.
‘That was a big river,’ said Ed, pointing out the now dry and wide winding channel snaking its way through the ruins.
Andy stretched forward in his seat and peered downwards.
‘Anywhere in particular you’d like to me to park?’ he asked.
‘There’s a bit of a building with an arch still standing over there,’ said Ed, pointing over to the right. ‘Let’s give that a try. But keep the motor running for a few moments after you land, just in case it collapses downwards. I don’t want us to end up upside-down in someone’s basement.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Andy. ‘I’ve been upside-down in this ship before and it’s not something I plan on repeating.’
Ed sat gripping the sides of his seat as Andy flared the ship and turned through three hundred and sixty degrees while checking below. Seemingly satisfied, he dropped the ship, creating clouds of dust that completely obscured the view. The landing was so soft, it took Andy a few moments to actually confirm they were down.
‘Hmm,’ he grunted. ‘It seems we’re down.’
He did as Ed had suggested and kept the antigravs spinning for a few seconds. Nothing moved, no tilting, no sudden drops. They glanced at each other, before Ed spoke.
‘Shut her down,’ he said, peering unimpressed at the billowing dust storm outside. ‘We need to let all this crap settle before venturing out.’
It took twenty minutes with the low gravity for visibility outside the front screen to return.
‘Any movement upstairs, Cleo?’ Ed asked.
‘No unusual insect movement detected,’ replied Cleo. ‘Although, I do have the exterminators’ number on speed dial just in case.’
‘I imagine even the commercial sprays would struggle with four-foot bugs in fucking body armour,’ grinned Andy. ‘Forgive me for being a cynic, but I’ll stick to my marine issue laser pulse rifle thanks.’
‘Talking of rifles,’ said Ed, standing and pulling two weapons off the rack behind them. ‘Best we take a couple with us.’
The Theo suits were next. Ed never could get used to the way they swept up from a pad under your feet and enclosed around you. He swore it was like being suddenly wrapped in black cling-wrap. There was that worrying second or two before the oxygen began to flow and the systems came online that unnerved him every time.
‘Ready?’ he asked Andy.
‘Ready,’ came the reply over the suit intercom.
Dust enveloped them as soon as the outer airlock opened, but soon cleared as Ed went first and made his way down the steps. He peered under the ship to see how far the struts had penetrated the surface and was encouraged to see it was only a few inches.
Extending his right leg, he let his foot fall onto the surface. It crunched like fine gravel and he wondered if James Dewey had felt so apprehensive when he first set foot on Mars some thirty years ago. The small cloud of dust around his boot soon settled and he turned and nodded at Andy, still standing in the airlock.
‘One small step for a…’
‘Shut up, Andrew, and get down here,’ said Ed, taking a few paces away from the ship.
‘Buzz Aldrin never got that kind of abuse,’ Andy moaned, following in Ed’s footsteps.
Ed ignored him and walked carefully across the crunching regolith towards the structure he’d spotted earlier. It was peculiar in the fact that the entire city had crumbled into dust probably many millennia before and yet this archway was so well built, it was seemingly one of the only things standing proud of the regolith for kilometres around.
It was about six metres tall and constructed of half-metre rectangular dark stone blocks. It was bigger than it had seemed from above and although some of the building around it had collapsed, this section was remarkably intact. The archway had geometric patterns carved into it and Ed ran his hand around its curvature, removing the thick layer of dust and marvelling at the intricacy of the design.
‘Wow,’ said Andy, looking over Ed’s shoulder. ‘Someone was a bit handy with a hammer and chisel.’
Ed peered through the arch and into the darkness beyond to discover a steep slope leading downwards. When he illuminated his rifle light, the beam revealed a tunnel going down about fifteen metres and turning right. Scuffing the dusty slope with one foot, he found it wasn’t a slope at all, but a step completely filled with the gritty regolith.
Andy did the same to Ed’s left and cleared enough away to enable him to step down and repeat the process.
‘It’s a staircase,’ he said, his boot sweeping enough off each step to enable him to descend.
‘Enable your personal shield,’ said Ed, following behind. ‘We don’t know what’s down here, our scans couldn’t penetrate below the surface.’
Once they reached the right-hand corner, they realised the staircase turned back on itself and continued down. It did this eight times before Andy spoke.
‘How deep d’you think we are now?’ he asked, flashing his light down the next flight.
‘Gotta be around fifty, perhaps sixty metres,’ said Ed, shining his beam downwards too. ‘Hang on,’ he said, squinting into the gloom. ‘There’s no turn, it goes straight on at the bottom of this one.’
‘There was a door here,’ said Andy, illuminating the broken remains on the ground and pointing out a recess in the walls where the frame had been.
‘It looks like there was a second one just a bit further up,’ said Ed, walking up the now level corridor. ‘There’s a lot less dust here, just a couple of centimetres and completely undisturbed.’
‘No one’s been down here for a while,’ Andy murmured. ‘Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.’
‘Holy moly!’ exclaimed Ed, shining his light past where the second door had been.
Andy spun his light around and aimed it in the same direction.
‘Shit, how big is it?’ he asked, walking over and staring into a room so big, their lights, although powerful, failed to illuminate the far wall.
The ceiling was about thirty metres above them, and glancing left and right Ed couldn’t make out a side wall in those directions either. Regimental rows of square pillars held up the roof, spaced about every twenty or so metres. Ed walked up to one of them and brushed it with his glove. More of the intricate carvings similar to the archway above adorned every flat surface of the pillar.
‘Stonemasons must’ve made a good living in this town,’ said Andy, shining his light on all the surrounding pillars and finding them equally and similarly decorated.
Ed stood and stared at the designs for a few moments.
‘D’you know, I’m sure I’ve seen something similar to this before,’ he said.
‘Bollocks, how could you have?’
‘I don’t know, they just seem familiar.’
‘Could be something you saw in the Valley of the Kings that time we went to Egypt, maybe?’
‘Hmm, I’m not so sure,’ Ed mumbled.
‘Let’s not blunder out into this sea of pillars and get disorientated,’ said Andy, jabbing his thumb back at the door. ‘Let’s follow the wall around and see how big this room really is.’
Ed nodded, turned back to the entrance and headed off to the left. He counted the pillars on his right as he went, the light beams creating eerie and slightly disconcerting shadows as they passed each row.
‘This is all carved out of solid rock down here,’ said Andy, running his glove along the wall. ‘See how flat and perfect the walls are. Whoever dug this out had some quality equipment.’
‘It all seems so human too,’ said Ed. ‘The shape of the doors, the carvings. I just don’t understand how an age-old human race could’ve evolved independently and this remotely in the halo.’
‘Perhaps the Ancients did come here,’ said Andy.
Ed stopped suddenly, causing Andy to bump into him, their personal shields fluorescing as they touched.
‘That’s it!’ exclaimed Ed, shining his light on the nearest pillar. ‘That’s where I’ve seen these markings before.’
‘Where?’
‘Around the doorways into the Ancients’ remote gateway control rooms.’
‘Holy crap,’ said Andy. ‘So they were here too?’