Enigma: A Far From Home Novel (8 page)

BOOK: Enigma: A Far From Home Novel
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Greene shifted uncomfortably. “I think she’s the wrong one.”

“Trust me.”

He shrugged. “Okay. We’ll agree to disagree on this one. So who else is on the team?”

“Oh, Selena Walker. I’ve tried to get as broad a range of expertise across the three teams as I can. Engineering, communications, science, history, tactical, and more. They’re all there,” Jessica said.

“And when are we gonna try and go across?” Greene asked.

“As soon as possible. I don’t want to waste any time. As soon as that Walkway is fitted, I’ll be leading the teams over there to bust that thing open and find out what’s inside,” she said.

“Man, I wish I could go with you . . .” Greene said wistfully.

Me too,
Jessica thought. But what she said was: “I know.”

* * *

The
Defiant
maintained constant velocity ahead of the
Enigma
. Indeed, if it were not for the planetoid below racing past, it might have looked as if the old Union ship were simply sitting in front of the huge cylinder. But it had matched the
Enigma
‘s orbital movement perfectly, maintaining a constant distance.

Chief Meryl Gunn watched on the monitor as the Walkway slowly emerged from the nose of the
Defiant
. She realised it was as if the two ships (and the
Enigma
could only be a ship – couldn’t it?) were facing one another down.

David and Goliath
, she thought idly. The Walkway stuck out like a long taper, a thin tongue. With minor bursts of propellant, the very end of the extendable docking corridor could be adjusted before reaching the other vessel’s hull.

“Remember, Lieutenant, you only get one shot,” she told Banks.

Lieutenant Banks wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably, due in no small part to the fact she was literally breathing down his neck as he performed the tricky feat. There were only the two of them down in the cramped dock control room, at the very front end of the
Defiant
. It was rarely used, and mostly intended for when a secure dock to a space station couldn’t be achieved without putting the superstructure of a starship at risk of damage. Then it was advisable to make use of the extendable docking device.

However, it certainly came in handy now.

“Ten seconds until contact,” the Lieutenant said. “Let’s hope your modifications work.”

“Hey, don’t question a woman’s workmanship. It’ll work,” she said.

Banks bit his bottom lip with concentration as the targeting reticule zeroed in on their goal: the airlock at the front end of the
Enigma
.

“Making final adjustments,” he said and bumped the end of the Walkway a little to the left. It lined up perfectly. He cut the speed and allowed it to drift to the point where it nearly came to a complete stop. With the final vestiges of its inertia, the end of the Walkway met the black hull of the mysterious
Enigma
. Without the Chief’s modifications to the end of the Walkway, it might not have held in place.

Indeed, the Chief had visions of it ricocheting back off, the Walkway swinging out into space and the Lieutenant struggling to reel it back in . . .

But it held. Just as she’d known it would.

Banks appeared to be impressed. “It’s holding. One hundred percent contact.”

“Yep. Just like I said. Don’t question my workmanship, boy-o.”

 

 

22.

 

Like many intrepid explorers throughout history, Captain Jessica King went first. She led all three teams, single file, through the full length of the Walkway. It was a little disconcerting to have the slightly flexible material of the corridor move around them, but after walking for ten minutes, the team members grew accustomed to the sensation. The Walkway seemed to have no end, but they pressed on with little conversation.

Although they all wore their suits, and would be fully protected from the vacuum of space should the corridor break, it was still somewhat disconcerting to have that as a possibility. As such, there was a safety harness between all the team members, so if that should happen, the other members of the group might act as a counter-weight to stop anyone flying out into space. The rock climbers of old had observed the same method of tethering themselves to one another. Should one person fall, the others would hold him or her up. Stop them from falling to their deaths.

It was no wonder conversation was scarce until they neared the far end of the Walkway. Finally, the airlock came into view and the tension dissipated.

“Don’t everyone relax just yet,” Jessica said over her helmet comm. system. “The real work’s about to start. This was just the preliminary mission.”

Then they reached the airlock proper.

* * *

The
Enigma
‘s airlock was perfectly circular, a perfect round hole in the vessel’s black hull rimmed with some kind of shiny alloy. Remarkably, the almost mirrored metal seemed unscathed by exposure to space. It looked pristine.

There was a heavy circular door at its centre, yet no visible way of opening it. Nothing that resembled a computer input, or a manual control. Just the nondescript airlock and the shiny metal that encircled it.

“I don’t get it,” Olivia Rayne said. The Walkway widened significantly as it neared the docking collar, enough to permit three of the team members to stand side-by-side. “No controls. No way to open it.”

Jessica clucked her tongue. “At least, nothing immediately apparent.”

She ran her gloved hand around the polished metal and at her touch, coloured lights appeared either within or below the metal itself.

“Oh,” Dr. Gentry said. “Most fascinating.”

Jessica made a sweep of the entire, shiny metal circle with her hand. The lights – eighteen of them in total – did not appear the entire circumference, but at specific points. And as the rest of the team crowded around to watch, it became apparent the lights were much more than illumination. They were symbols, though of a kind none of them had seen before.

“What now?” Rayne asked.

“Well…” Jessica said. She pressed a finger against one of the symbols and it flashed. She proceeded to push them all, one after the other. “Sometimes you just have to push every button.”

“A most unscientific –” Dr. Gentry started to say. His eyebrows rose in surprise as the airlock started to open. The door retracted into the hull of the
Enigma
. “Well…”

Captain King stepped forward and aimed her head torch into the gaping darkness within the giant structure. There was little to see but a kind of decking. As powerful as the torch was, it didn’t illuminate anything. Barely penetrated the gloom before them.

Jessica turned back to the others.

“I know it’s customary for a speech at this point,” she said. “And now I wish I’d prepared one. But I didn’t. So how about we get inside and see what’s in there?”

“Sounds good to me,” Lieutenant Jackson said.


Defiant
, are you listening?”

“Affirmative, Captain,” Commander Greene said on the other end.

“We’re going in, Commander.”

“Good luck.”

And with that, Captain Jessica King of the starship
Defiant
became the first human to step foot within the
Enigma
.

 

 

23.

 

As it turned out, they were only within the airlock itself. It was big enough to hold them all. The ingenuity of the
Enigma
‘s design made itself instantly apparent. They realised that the same decking they’d taken to be the floor was in fact on every surface, for what was up and down? The
Enigma
‘s builders had provided a chamber shaped like a hexagon to provide numerous surfaces on which they could walk. Every wall was also the floor and the ceiling. A very weak gravity helped them walk on the otherwise slippery surface.

“That’s an inner lock,” Lieutenant Belcher said, approaching a door entirely similar to that which they’d just stepped through. I’d assume that after that, we’ll encounter some kind of atmosphere.”

“Doctor? Would you care to give it a try?” Jessica asked Dr. Gentry.

The older man grinned. “Yes!”

He bounded forward and copied her own actions from moments before. The lit symbols appeared again around the door, and the Doctor proceeded to press each one in turn.

The inner lock opened, much the same as the one on the hull had.

“Doctor?” Jessica said. She held out an open hand. “After you.”

 

 

24.

 

“They have breached the
Enigma
, sir,” Ensign Roland Beaumont reported from the science station. “Teams entering the first centrifuge now.”

Commander Greene nodded. “Excellent. Keep me apprised.”

* * *

The inner airlock was much like the first, but smaller. When the last of them had stepped through it, the door shut behind them.

Lights flashed around them from within the hexagonal walls.

“Readings?” King asked.

Dr. Gentry checked his scanner. “I’m reading atmosphere. Pressure rising. It’s thin at the moment, but breathable.”

“Interesting,” she said. “So the Namar breathed an Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere the same as us?”

“It would appear so. In a moment, I predict this chamber will be fully pressurised,” Gentry said.

And he was right. With its equalisation sequence complete, the lights all came on at once around them, revealing another door at the other end.

Jessica looked to Commander Chang. “Would you like the honour, Commander?”

“Well,” Chang said, a big smile on her face. “If the offer’s there . . .”

Jessica noted the way Chang looked at Olivia Rayne. The shine in their eyes.

The Commander worked the mysterious controls of the airlock, manipulating the lit symbols just as she and Dr. Gentry had before.

“Oh . . .”

There was nothing but darkness on the other side. They all stepped through the open hatch one-by-one, their lights barely touching the black nothing before them.

“No power, do you think?” Chang asked.

Before Captain King could answer, the world was filled with blinding light as the sun came up within
Enigma
.

 

 

25.

 

An entire world on the inside of a barrel,
Jessica thought, once her eyes became accustomed to the brilliance of the
Enigma
‘s lights. They were situated directly opposite, on the end of stems. There were three of them, and each was so bright it hurt to stare directly into them.

But beyond the adjustment from night eyes to normal vision, it was what was in front of them that took getting used to. The team stood on a large platform, following the same hexagonal shape. They could have exited on any side, and still found themselves on a flat surface looking down on the strangest landscape ever conceived.

The inside of the cylinder was lined with habitat. On a planet, or any spherical body, the surface formed an unending curve down. Here in the
Enigma
, the surface curved up over their heads. And while they had no sensation of the cylinder’s momentum, since they stood within it, they were aware that the centrifugal force of the
Enigma
‘s spin was keeping everything pinned to the inner wall with gravity equivalent to Earth’s.

“This is . . . most unexpected,” Dr. Gentry said.

“You can say that again,” Lieutenant Jackson said. “I keep looking up, expecting it all to fall down around us.”

“It won’t,” Dr. Gentry said, and made a brief explanation of the forces involved.

Jessica couldn’t look away. A grey coloured floor lined the entire habitat, with what looked like simple metal huts or houses, and scattered among them, larger buildings. She spotted no greenery at all. Nothing living.

However, she did see mist beginning to line the floor below them, in the habitat.

“Doctor Gentry, I see something like mist? Down there. What temperature are we reading?”

“It was below zero when we entered, but now climbing past zero,” he announced. “What you’re seeing is probably ice crystals vaporising. They no doubt formed in the dark, cold, sleep of this vessel.”

“Strange that you should refer to it as sleep,” Chang said.

“Why not? Have we not awoken it from some kind of slumber?” Gentry replied, pointing to the suns in front of them.

It,
Jessica thought.
Or them…

* * *

Chang peered over the edge of where they stood. There was a drop of hundreds of feet to the monochrome surface of the habitat. She stepped back warily.

“Quite a way up, aren’t we?” she asked.

“This reminds me,” Gentry said. He looked around for something, obviously couldn’t find it, then searched his utility belt. He settled for a small wrench.

“Doctor, what are you doing?” King asked him.

“Demonstrating an interesting effect of the cylinder, Captain,” he said and threw the miniature wrench out into the open air. It should have fallen over the side and clattered on the ground below. However it didn’t. The wrench spun out into mid-air and continued to travel until it ran out of momentum, slowed by the drag of the air. Then, as they watched, it began a slow fall toward the surface. It would take a while, but it would fall down. Mother Nature would make sure of that.

“The gravity is stronger down there than up here,” Dr. Gentry said. “A vessel like the
Defiant
has a form of artificial gravity holding everything in place. The
Enigma
works on a different principle. It uses force to do the same job. However, where we are, standing on the very axis, the gravitational force is not in effect. It’s only due to the adaptive soles of our space suits that we are able to walk around without floating off.”

“Well spotted,” King said. “Now we should see about –”

Gentry stopped her in her tracks as he began removing his helmet.

“What’re you doing!?” she yelled, rushing forward to stop him. But before she could get there, the older man had already finished the job. His helmet was off and tucked under his arm. He sniffed the ozone.

BOOK: Enigma: A Far From Home Novel
8.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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