The Crucible: Leap of Faith

All characters in this publication
are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.

The Crucible Episode One

Leap of Faith

Copyright ©
2015
Odette C. Bell

Cover art stock photos:
Woman looks through fingers
©
alexannabuts, and Background with Stars, Nebula,
Planets and Spaceships

©
diversepixel. Licensed from Depositphotos.

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THE

CRUCIBLE

Episode One

LEAP OF FAITH

Chapter 1

The edge of reality is an
unforgiving place.

There is no light out here. Just
darkness. A cold unrelenting darkness that has witnessed every
second, every minute, every century, and every aeon.

It outlasts all.

And it waits. Waits for an
opportunity that comes once in the lifetime of each galactic
civilization.

In the cold it sits. In the
darkness it watches.

Until we give it the opportunity
it seeks.

…

The Mari Sector, Research Dig
Alpha 78

“Are you serious? You left the
levitation pads back in the jumper?” Research Manager Amy Lee
crossed her arms tightly against the stiff fabric of her
environmental suit. Her helmet was off – they’d already erected an
environmental field around this huge cavern. So everyone was able
to see her scowl. She was good at frowning, too. She’d had years of
practice.

Ensign Weatherby brought both his
hands up and took a step back, regulation brown boots crunching
over the fine gray-white rock beneath him. “They weren’t in the
manifests to be brought to the dig site,” he protested.

“Well you should have thought
ahead. There’s no way we’re going to be able to shift thousands
upon thousands of tons of rock with no levitation pads. Put your
helmet on and go and get them,” Lee snapped through a clenched jaw.
The powerful lights they’d set up all around the dig site gave off
a tremendous glow, one that glinted along that thin slice of her
glistening white teeth.

Ensign Weatherby swallowed, throat
pushing hard against the navy blue and black of his Star Forces
uniform. He turned quickly on his heel, feet scampering as he
rushed away from her.

Lee stared at him, hands clamped
on her hips.

When she’d petitioned Star Forces
Command for military assistance on this dig site, she’d kind of
hoped they’d give her a crew that wasn’t wet around the ears. These
kids had probably been out in space for a week.

She turned suddenly, the boots of
her EV suit pressing against the soft and crumbling rock of the
cavern floor.

Behind her was a sight she’d never
seen in her career. Most digs were simple. No larger than a modern
day light cruiser.

This… this was different. Every
time she paused to stare around the cavern, an undeniable race of
nerves chased up and down her back. Sometimes it was even hard to
breathe.

This place was… incredible. It was
on another level.

The size of a city, they’d only
been able to unearth half a square kilometer so far.

It was enormous. It put every
other dig site she’d ever worked on to shame.

Behind her was a massive flat
wall. It wasn’t made out of the soft white crumbly rock that
littered the ground. Instead matter scans had revealed it was a
never-before-seen composite of trithalium, one of the hardest
substances ever identified.

The wall was completely unadorned
apart from a small circle lodged right in the middle. A good
hundred feet from the floor, they’d had to set up scaffolding to
reach it.

Right now the most trusted members
of her team were investigating that strange circle.

A circle within a circle within a
circle, etched around the insides of each concave component was an
unknown script. One small enough that it was almost on the atomic
level. It contained so much information that it would take a week
to scan through it all. Not, of course, that anyone was close to
understanding it yet.

Research Manager Lee took another
step towards that awesome sight. That’s when it happened. Another
goddamn tremor. It shook up through the floor, chasing up the
walls, rattling the scaffolding in its place. Despite the fact it
was magnetically locked onto the wall, it still trembled like a
palsied hand.

Lee staggered to the side,
dropping to one knee and securing a hand to the ground. The rock
was so soft her fingers pulverized a section to dust.

The tremor stopped.

She punched to her feet, scanning
the cavern in every direction. “Any injuries?” she
snapped.

Her team slowly picked themselves
up from wherever they’d been standing and waved at her.

She let out a terse breath and
locked her hands on her hips. Then, without even realizing it, her
gaze flicked up towards that massive smooth wall.

Powerful hover lights roved around
it, reacting to air currents as they shifted and bobbed, their
bright yellow-white light illuminating the whole wall.

Tension built in her chest, and
before she noticed it, it trapped her breath in place, driving it
hard into the back of her throat. She clenched her teeth and
brought her hands up, the fingers pressing into fists.

This would be the most important
dig of her career. There was an unknown civilization behind that
wall, she was sure of it. A dead one, of course. But she, Research
Manager Lee, would be the one to drag it out into the
light.

Taking one step back, her gaze
still locked on that wall, she finally turned. Angling her head
towards the massive hover lifts that sat along the back of the
cavern and allowed people to ascend to the surface above, she
wondered where Ensign Weatherby had gotten to.

If he wasn’t careful, he’d miss
this historic moment. The moment when they would open a door into
the past….

…

Ensign Weatherby

He brought a hand up and wiped it
over his helmet. The atmosphere of this old moon was unpredictable.
Though there wasn’t enough air to breathe, condensation kept
covering every surface. His EV suit was slicked with it. If his
superiors had opted for better equipment, the suit would be able to
auto adjust to the condensation, and evaporate it clean off every
surface.

But his superiors had not opted
for better equipment. To them, this was just another dig. Important
for archaeological purposes, but essentially a
distraction.

Tensions were building within the
Alliance. Before he’d left for this dig, he’d heard a few reports
of skirmishes in the Calcore Sector. He hadn’t joined the Academy
to be sent on babysitting missions like this. Plus, Research
Manager Lee was enough of a ball breaker that she could look after
herself. She didn’t need a full contingent of Star Forces personnel
just to hold her scaffolding.

Bringing a hand up, Weatherby
tried to clean the visor of his helmet again. Spreading his
fingers, he angled his hand until the palm of his EV suit could
scoop away the condensation on his visor. There were grip sensors
sewn into the pads of his gloves that helped him pick up things in
this otherwise cumbersome suit. They were perfect for clearing his
visor, though the effect didn’t last.

“Christ,” he spat, voice twisting
with bitter frustration. Christ, he didn’t want to be
here.

He petulantly kicked at a rock by
his feet. Though the move was angry, it wasn’t powerful, and yet he
pulverized the rock, and it scattered fine particles of white-gray
dust over his reinforced boot. He watched the dust scatter over the
rounded surface of his shoe and fall back to the ground.

Then that goddamned condensation
made it almost impossible to see again.

He was on the dark side of this
moon. Though there was a star in this solar system, this damn rock
turned so slowly you barely got to see it.

Technically his suit had an
inbuilt light source lodged into the center of his chest that could
be activated with a tap. Well, his was acting up. It kept blinking
on and off, sending bursts of powerful illumination scattering out
over this rocky wasteland with the erratic pulse of a guttering
candle.

He swore again. He even tipped his
head back, clenched his teeth, and let out a stifled
scream.

When he let his head drop, he saw
something. Just at the corner of his vision, maybe 20 meters
away.

Then the light on his suit went
out completely.

His rational mind told him he’d
probably seen another member of his crew – some other poor soul
who’d been ordered around by Manager ball-breaker Lee.

Still, he couldn’t deny the pulse
of nerves that tore up his back. His fingers and toes tingled with
a quick shot of adrenaline.

He waited for his light to turn
back on.

It didn’t.

Something scampered towards Ensign
Weatherby. His suit was too old to pick up the sound of its erratic
quick movements as it flung itself over the soft ground.

It was just another dark shape on
a black night.

Weatherby took a step back, and
his light flickered back on.

He screamed.

The creature was upon him. It
latched its claws into his chest and ripped his suit from his body,
reaching in for the flesh beneath.

…

Lieutenant Commander Nathan
Shepherd

Christ, I was bored out of my
skull.

I shouldn’t be. This was the first
rest I’d had in over two months. We’d docked with the Argus Service
Cluster – a group of interconnected fueling stations orbiting the
Central Ruling Planet. CRP housed the galactic House of Lords and
Ladies and every center of trade and scientific excellence in the
Milky Way. It was also the home planet to the Star Forces
Academy.

I’d graduated from that very
Academy almost 7 years ago now. I’d climbed quickly through the
ranks of the Star Forces. Somehow. It was still a surprise to me
that I was a lieutenant commander at my age.

I stood with my elbows pressed
against the railing before me, leaning out as I watched the view. I
was in the Central Administration Hub. Behind me was a massive
domed building that housed the House of Lords and Ladies, and below
that the Primary Central Library of the Alliance. Though the
building itself was a sight to behold, I chose to stare down from
one of the many platforms that encircled it and watch the people
below. Sky bridges connected the various buildings of the
administration hub, blazing into light every time someone stepped
across them. Due to the sheer amount of air traffic in this sector,
the bridges were not stationary structures. Rather they were made
of electrified light pads that followed a person as they picked
their path through the very air.

When I’d been a kid, sky bridges
had blown my mind. They seemed like such a leap of faith. You had
to take a step and wait for the electrified pad to form under your
foot.