Dark Beneath the Moon (21 page)

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“
DIOS
!
CUT THE
drives, Viss!” I shouted, diving from my chair to the seat next to Rei. “I’m on the co-pilot board.”

“I’ll take dock, you’re starboard,” she said tersely. Her fingers skimmed ceaselessly over the pilot’s board, gently easing the ship this way and that. Working together, we had a marginally better chance of keeping the
Tane Ikai
intact.

We had emerged from the wormhole into the middle of the biggest, ugliest asteroid field I’d ever seen from the inside. Initially, I didn’t think we could make it through alive. The asteroids ranged from huge—far bigger than the
Tane Ikai
—to pebble-sized, tumbling around us, misshapen detritus from the creation and destruction of worlds, huddled together now for comfort or mischief. Even the smallest could punch a hole through the hull if the shields didn’t stop it. The largest would overwhelm the shields and dash us to pieces. Over and behind them all lay a hideous red-orange light, burning like the embers of a malicious fire.

Viss’s voice rumbled up from the engineering deck. “Everything’s offline except maneuvering jets,” he said. “Burst drive is enabled in case we have to move quickly, but it won’t create any drag on what you’re doing now.”

No one else on the bridge had said a word yet, although I’d heard a few sharply indrawn breaths when we first saw what lay in wait on this side of the wormhole.

“When we get out of this,” I said to Rei, not taking my eyes off the screen or slowing my reflexive nudges on the board, “let’s come to a full stop while we take stock.”

“
Por certa
, Captain,” she answered. “I might need to go to the head and throw up.”

It probably took less than ten minutes to get through, although it passed like a lifetime. I was glad I’d told Rei to stop when we got clear. I was dumbstruck by what I saw when we emerged.

The reddish light that suffused this system like a slowly spreading stain was the result of a number of factors. Off in the distance a dim orange star burned, its meagre warmth unlikely to reach this far. Closer to us an interstellar dust cloud loomed, the orange sun painting it with a dark red underbelly and brighter, yellowish specularity streaking across the top. There were no planets in evidence from where we hung, suspended beyond the asteroid field’s outer limits.

But it was none of those things that caught my attention at first; I noticed them only peripherally. No, what drew my eye, what in fact had the eye of everyone on board, was the space station.

“
Dipatrino
, what is that?” breathed Hirin. I hadn’t realized that he’d moved to stand behind me.

“Captain, I’ve begun logging navigation data on this system,” Yuskeya reported in a flat, emotionless voice, her Protectorate training kicking in, no doubt. “I don’t recommend activating scans.”

“Noted, no scans,” I said. “Good thinking. So far, no-one seems to have noticed us, so let’s try and keep it that way.”

They were coming to life now, getting past that initial shock.

“No incoming comm signals that we’re able to pick up,” Baden said, and his wording struck me. We might have had the latest and greatest technology when we left Mars, but everything was an unknown now. Someone could be screaming at us with their own communications equipment, but if it wasn’t compatible, we’d never hear them.

“Should I send a general hail to the—whatever that is?” Baden asked.

I couldn’t take my eyes away from the space station. That was all I could think to call it, although as Baden implied, it wasn’t like any station I’d ever encountered. It was dark, sleek, angular, and imposing; as malefic-looking as the spidery ship that had pursued the Chron into our midst, with the same gelatinous outer texture. This thing was big, though; as big as Sagan Station, and that could comfortably house over five thousand people. Spiky protrusions extended from a central torus, so many that I couldn’t easily count them. Six, on the sides I could see, were larger and extended further than the rest, pointing randomly to all corners of the system. The structure didn’t rotate or move, so if there was gravity on board it was generated in some way other than centripetal force. Apart from the spikes, it was featureless. No lights, no viewports, no docking bays, no gun turrets.

That last was slightly comforting, at least.

“Captain?” Baden asked.

“No, let’s not say anything yet. They haven’t demanded to know what we’re doing here, so maybe they don’t think we’re worth notice.”

Slowly I stood up from the co-pilot’s seat and moved to the captain’s chair. Hirin followed me to stand behind me again. I think he must have sensed that I needed him at my back.

Nothing else happened.

“Should I start scanning the system?” Yuskeya asked.

I shook my head. “I think we’ll hold off a bit longer. Let’s see if we can get a bigger visual picture of what’s here. Rei, maneuvering jets only, let’s circle around without getting any closer. Just a nice, slow, steady crawl.”

I resisted the urge to rub my forehead. I could really use something for this headache, but now was not the time to leave the bridge, or let the crew see anything else amiss.

“I can’t maintain a perfectly consistent distance without taking any readings,” Rei said skeptically.

“Eyeball it,” I told her.

And so we began one of the strangest surveys I’ve ever performed. Rei piloted the ship slowly around the station, and the rest of us watched it roll past on the screens.

“Luta,” Hirin said as we moved away from our initial observation point, “did you notice that one of those spikes seems to be pointing directly at the wormhole we came through?”

“I hadn’t noticed, but I’m glad there’s no weapon in the end of it.”

“Captain, I’m getting readings that indicate a second wormhole in this system, nearby,” Yuskeya said. “And no, I’m not scanning,” she added. “Passive data reception only. We picked up its radiation signature.”

“Interesting. Can you pinpoint it?”

“Not yet, not without actively scanning. I’ll tell you when I get a better fix.”

“What do you think it is?” Maja asked, her eyes locked on the “station.”

“It is not Chron construction, I feel certain,” Cerevare said.

“Why not?”

The Lobor shrugged. “Perhaps it is a feeling only, but it is too different from the Chron artifacts we have observed. And too much like the ship that pursued the Chron through the wormhole. Did any of you feel that those two ships were constructed by the same species?”

Baden shook his head. “No. They felt too different. And this feels completely different from the artifact moon.”

“Agreed.” Cerevare nodded.

“Here’s a question,” Viss said over the ship’s comm. “How did anyone get through that asteroid field going
toward
the wormhole, and maintain the right velocity and approach to engage a skip drive and enter the terminal point safely? And not once, but twice, since both ships came through separately?”

“And how is that field even there?” Gerazan asked. “It’s not part of an orbiting belt. It’s as if it’s suspended there.”

“Too many questions, not enough answers,” Rei complained. “And too much chatter. I’m trying to do a delicate job, here.”

Baden turned to Gerazan with a grin. “Don’t pay any attention,” he said in a conspiratorial stage whisper. “She loves to work under pressure. She just wants everyone to appreciate it when she does.”

“Baden, if I didn’t have my hands full trying to keep this ship safe—”

“I know, I know, I’d be in for it. But you do, so I’m not worried.”

Gerazan’s face twitched, as if he didn’t know whether to smile or not.

“They’re always like this when we’re in a life-threatening situation,” I assured him. “For some reason it keeps them focused on the task at hand.”

“Got a reading on that wormhole,” Yuskeya said. She tapped in a few coordinates, and one of the screens showed a long-range view with the wormhole artificially highlighted in green.

“What’s wrong with the view?” Maja asked. “It’s like the picture is unsteady or something. Something’s moving.”

“You won’t believe—” Yuskeya started, but Hirin cut her off.

“There’s a second asteroid field obscuring the entrance to that wormhole as well?”

Yuskeya gave him a raised eyebrow. “Okay, maybe you will believe it. You’re exactly right. There’s another asteroid field there. The movement of the asteroids is distorting the image.”

“And unless I miss my guess,” Hirin continued, “another one of those big spikes is pointing directly at that wormhole.”

“Hirin Paixon,” I said in my best annoyed-wife voice, “how about this? We’ll grant your genius if you stop showing off and get on with your theory.”

He inclined his head in a mock bow. “Anything for you, Captain. I think this is some kind of guard station, set up to stop transit through the wormholes. Or at least to control who goes through them. I’m willing to bet that there are more than two wormholes in this system. I think this is a nexus system, like MI 2 Eridani or Mu Cassiopeia, and there may be a wormhole for every one of those larger spikes.”

“Beta Comae, too. But none of those systems have this many wormholes,” Baden argued. “Four each, right?”

“We’ve never found more than five in a single system,” Yuskeya agreed.

“Which is why I think,” Hirin added with a flourish of his hand, “that if you have a system with this many wormholes present, they may not all be naturally occurring. I think at least some of these have been constructed by a race of such obvious technological advancement, that we’d better hope and pray they like us when we meet them.”

We were still gaping at him when the ship alarm sounded softly to notify us that we were being scanned.

“
ON THE ALERT
, folks,” I said. I was surprised to feel the prick of sweat on my forehead, and brushed it away with the back of my hand. Was something in this system causing the ship to overheat? Yet no warnings came in from ship systems.

“Yuskeya, can you tell where it’s coming from?”

“Definitely originating from the station,” she said. “It’s nothing invasive or dangerous. Just a general scan like we’d run ourselves to see where a ship came from or possibly its composition. Should I try to block it?”

“No, not if you don’t consider it dangerous.”

“Burst drive is ready if you need it, Rei,” Viss said over the ship’s comm.

“Captain?”

I shrugged. “Where would we go? Let’s sit tight and see what happens. But stay ready, Rei.”

The scan continued for maybe another half-minute, then stopped. The station and the ship fell silent again.

“Maybe it’s automated?” Baden suggested. “It might run at intervals whether there’s a ship in the system or not. No-one’s tried to say hello to us still.”

“Captain Paixon?” Jahelia Sord’s voice came over the ship’s comm. “Would you mind telling me what that alarm was about?”

“Not now, Sord,” I snapped, and signalled to Baden to shut down her access to the bridge audio. I didn’t want her listening in to this.

Rei pushed away from the pilot’s board and turned to me. “We’ve been flying around this thing, we’ve been scanned, and nothing else has happened. Why don’t we stop babystepping? Trying to hide in plain sight makes me feel
freneza
; I’d rather fly up to the front door and knock.”

“We could run a scan of the station,” Yuskeya suggested. “They scanned us, so it’s only fair.”

“Yes, and what if there’s no word in their alien vocabulary for ‘fair’?” I felt annoyed. We’d cast our lot already by taking the wormhole into this system, and I was tired of waiting for something to happen—but I didn’t know which way to jump. I shrugged out of my jacket and into shirtsleeves. The bridge felt unbearably hot. Why was no-one else complaining? “
Al inferno—
to hell with it,” I growled. “We might as well find out what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Hirin shot me a puzzled frown, and I realized how sharply I’d spoken.

“We’ll take it slow,” I said, willing my voice calm and steady. “Yuskeya, run a general scan of the station, looking for the same sort of data we got on that spider ship. Nothing invasive. Rei, be ready to kick that burst drive over if someone doesn’t like what we’re doing.”

The scan brought no response. “All right then, let’s head out to that second wormhole and investigate the asteroid field.”

“Burst drive?” Rei asked.

“Go ahead. We’re throwing caution to the winds.”

We reached the asteroid field quickly under the burst drive. It was the twin of the one we’d had to navigate to enter the system—asteroidal debris tumbling haphazardly, but clustered around the wormhole terminal point.