The Trinity Sitch - Book 3: Blade of the Fury
Chapter 5 - The Tomb at the Gate
Once the crew of the U.S.S. Reynolds reported their findings to the appropriate authorities the first priority was to apply a proper label to the planet. The Department of Interstellar Navigation first assigned it a number based on the actually coordinates. That posed a special problem, as the planet was so far from the Point of Navigational Zero (Planet Earth on January 1st, midnight, Greenwich Mean Time) the numerical designation filled most of a page when printed out. That was fine for computers but not very convenient for real people.
Three traditions for naming a newly discovered world were bandied about. Probably the oldest was applying the name of the starship that was first to enter orbit, much in the same way inlets were often named for the first ship to cross them. Firestone, one of the most populous colonies, had been named that way. Unfortunately, one of the mining colony moons in the Hunderaga System was already called Reynold's World, so that was out. Next was naming it for the company that was responsible for funding the original expedition. Marsh Industries, on advice from legal counsel, quickly vetoed that option.
The sunless sphere went on the books as Rokowski's World, after the commanding officer of the Reynolds when they first discovered it. That particular fact was roundly ignored by the exploration crew that returned almost two years later to unlock its secrets, despite the fact they were in the charge of Doctor Susan Rokowski once more. Many fanciful terms, many not very nice, were used by the hardy men and women but one, suggested by a slightly built woman with reddish blonde hair and brown eyes, stuck.
In the years to come, including once the results of the expedition were made public, the planet became known to all as Black Hole Deep.
The primary obstacle facing the explorers was lack of light. Not only was there no natural illumination, it seemed everything on the surface was iron black! Even the powerful floodlights mounted to the crawler seemed to be swallowed up by the inky blackness. The drivers were forced to concentrate the beams right in front of the vehicle to avoid impediments the scanners missed.
For three weeks their ship, a cargo vessel fitted with a Telewarp Drive, sat in orbit, taking exhaustive scans of the surface. The sphere looked perfectly round and smooth when viewed as a whole in the computer simulations but the lack of mountain ranges and oceans belied the true nature of the topography. With only a very thin atmosphere composed mainly of inert gasses and no abundance of space-borne debris to wear the surface smooth it was a continuous series of sharp crags and deep ravines.
The crawler was built with just that sort of terrain in mind. It resembled a ten legged insect, each segmented leg ending in a treaded, spherical wheel. Sensors built into the armatures would raise or lower each one, keeping the main cabin level, depending on the prevailing slope. The whole thing looked like a giant mutated cockroach equipped with its own light show. The crew had, jokingly, scrawled a name on the exterior, though it wasn't recognized as official by the proper owners.
They had dubbed it "Roachie."
The petite strawberry blonde, Jolene Stommble, a woman in her late twenties, was half way through her shift at the controls, as usual chewing on a plastic disposable pen, her uniform cap on backwards to keep the visor out of her eyes. Under normal conditions all the driver had to do was point the thing in the proper direction and hit the accelerator. Microcomputers kept the treads in contact with solid ground. At least that was the theory. In practice it took an accomplished driver to manually give each wheel a proper 'nudge' every so often.
With Jo at the controls you could tell just how frustrating a particular patch of ground was by what happened to her pen. Today the outer shaft was chewed beyond recognition. Not only did the craggy rock make it almost impossible to do anything but 'walk' the legs, it was being done in near pitch black.
Oh well, she told herself, You can't stop a Stommble! Though her father never considered, with all the decades the war had raged, that it would end and she would be cashiered out of the Starforce with many student loans coming due. That meant taking a high-paying but incredibly difficult job like this one to get out of debt in a hurry. At least here the former combat tank commander didn't have Arkonians or Torellians shooting at her. The biggest worry at the moment was burning out the lamps in the floodlights. Actually, considering they were providing the only illumination on the whole planet, that was a very legitimate fear.
Jo hadn't told anyone on the crew, but she was deathly afraid of the dark.
"Hey, Doc!" She called from her domed seat. "It looks like we've got a major change in the landscape up ahead!"
Susan Rokowski appeared at the bottom of the ladder, her short brown hair tucked into a cap just like Jo's. "That isn't on the map." That didn't mean anything, considering how poorly detailed the scans were turning out to be.
"Well, either the scans missed this or my eyes are playing tricks on me and I'd far rather trust my eyes. This thing didn't even show up on the tracking radar until right before I could actually see it.
Susan climbed into the seat beside Jo. "That looks almost like an impact crater."
"How could there be an impact crater when we didn't detect any asteroids that could collide with the planet?"
"Just because there aren't any now doesn't mean there never were any. Stop at the edge, Jo. We may need a closer look before we decide to go though or around it."
The leading edge of the crater only rose a few meters, causing no difficulty for the crawler. The lights could not penetrate the darkness to the far side nor reach the floor. It was up to the radar to paint a clearer picture of the bowl shaped depression.
"It's two point three kilometers across, nearly perfectly circular. The floor is about thirty meters below the local mean terrain level. We can actually make better time cutting across it. The bottom appears to be perfectly smooth, much smoother than anything we've encountered so far." Jo reported, reading the radar returns.
Susan studied the three dimensional image the computer created with the radar data. "I take it back, I don't think this is an impact crater at all."
"No?"
"The shape is all wrong. It's too regular and the forces required to wear a normal crater down to these dimensions are not present here. Okay, Jo, I think you can take us in."
Jo keyed the microphone on her headset. "Attention all crew, attention, we are about to descend a slope that cannot be fully compensated for. Secure any work areas that can be affected by a change in our attitude."
Moments later the other dozen scientists and workers reported back that all was ready. She pushed the control forward and the first set of wheels rolled over the lip of the rim. It was becoming more and more evident to her it really wasn't a normal crater. On a nearly airless, moisture less globe such as this the rim should have been at least condensed dust, not a solid mass. The last set of wheels crossed the edge and the vehicle rolled slowly downward, leveling out at the bottom.
"I'm getting some weird returns." Jo said as they advanced on the center, her eyes more on the radar now than the actual ground.
"I'll say" Susan said, pointing outside.
The floor of the crater was not just flat, it was smooth, perfectly smooth. The computer refined the image again, revealing they were traversing a massive wedge shaped block. It interlocked with identical blocks on either side. The image resolved once more showing a complete ring of blocks around the entire inner circumference of the crater.
This was no crater! It was a construct!
Jo was so enraptured by the discover she almost didn't see the edge in time. She jammed on the brakes, one hand reaching for the thruster controls in case they couldn't stop in time. Only the first pair of wheels went over the edge before she could back the vehicle up.
"Okay, fresh undies time." She sighed in relief.
Susan looked back and forth between the canopy and the computer display. "This can't be right."
"It like the radar isn't reading anything. No mass, no atmo. It's like a hole in the planet." Jo said. She gripped a handle above her head and played one of the lights down the pit.
…and down, and down until the beam disappeared in the darkness.
"Jo, I'm beginning to think you might just be right." She touched a control on the communications console. "Morgan, have you got a lock on our position?"
"Gotcha." Came a voice from high orbit.
"We need a full detailed scan for about a three kilometer radius."
"You got it, chief. We'll be in position inside of five." Morgan Casman clicked off her comm, adjusting the orbit so they would pass over the crater.
Susan climbed down from the canopy to await the results on the main science console. She didn't have to wait long, as a significantly more detailed image of the crater and ringed pit appeared on the large holographic display.
"That's interesting." Teep said, studying a portion of the construct.
"More interesting than finding and artificially constructed ring on a planet with not sun to orbit, where it is utterly impossible for life to have evolved?" She smiled at the engineer, still happy to have most of her original crew on the expedition.
"Everything is relative. Compared to everything else, this is truly surprising."
"Okay, Teep, don't keep me in suspense."
"Well, I'm reading a pocket of atmo. About a hundred fifty feet to port."
"More CO2?"
"Yeah, but with oxy and nitrogen mixed in. We're talking Earth normal ratios here."
"How is that possible?"
"Near as I can tell, there's some kind of structure there. Might be a dome, I can't tell at this resolution."
Susan keyed her mike. "You get that Jo?"
"On it!" The crawler lurched slightly as it backed, then turned toward the indicated structure. "Susan, you need to see this!"
She climbed back up, staring at the glassine half sphere before them. It was made of interlocking shapes, much like a geodesic dome, but with other, many sided polygons instead of simple triangles. "Jo, turn the lights off!"
The floodlights dimmed but the dome remained lit with a soft glow and it wasn't the reflection of their cabin lights. The glow got brighter until they could make out individual details within. What was clearly an airlock lit up before them as if making an invitation.
They couldn't get into their environment suits fast enough.
The lock wasn't made of metal or plastic like they were used to, but seemed to instead be made of the same type of black stone everything else was. They spent a few moments trying to locate a control panel but were shocked when the doors opened by themselves. Slowly the doors swung shut and the lights inside the lock came up. Several tense minutes later the inner doors opened, admitting them into the main dome.
A computer built into her suit chimed. "We've got full breathable atmo." She reached up to the joint between her helmet and suit and broke the seal. As improbable as it was, she was breathing normal, if stale air just like home on Earth.
It was not a very large chamber, only about thirty feet across. In the center of the room was a staircase slowly spiraling downward into darkness. A half circle of stones set about waist high faced the kilometer wide pit outside.
Slowly it began to dawn on Susan what they were seeing.
"I think this thing is an Azarian Stargate!"
"Isn't this kind of small for one of those?" Jo asked. Some time in the distant past, a race of beings known only as Azarians had left a number of rough-hewn stone rings spaced at regular intervals around the cosmos. Several of them had been re-activated, allowing more rapid travel between worlds. It was a sort of portal, a gate, if you wish, that allowed a starship to traverse the same mysterious realm the Reynolds, and now the converted freighter to travel almost instantaneously across massive tracts of space. Jo's question was sparked by the fact all the gates found so far were at least twenty five kilometers across.
At a single kilometer, this one was quite small indeed.
As a scientist, Susan was aware of the original, ancient controls of the huge gates. Modern, sophisticated controls had been built over the top of them, including monitoring stations and other sophisticated scientific devices to maintain some semblance of control. It had not yet been discovered how they worked, but they knew how to use them as a tool.
Her curiosity piqued, Jo shined the lights mounted on her suit's arm down the darkened circular opening, tracing the curving staircase with the beam. Cautiously, for it was dark indeed down there, she made her way down. It wasn't as far down as she first expected.
Her short yelp brought Susan and Teep right down to her.
The bones looked as if they might have belonged to something that once looked like a man. If they had indeed, that man would have been over twenty feet tall. The bones were heavy looking, as if they were bigger than a creature that size would need. They were arraigned on the floor in much the pattern they had been when it was alive, but the connecting tissue had long since gone to dust.
The body may have resembled that of a man, but that's where the resemblance ended. The skull was completely different. It was long, tapering to the back, the neck bones looking as if they would be attached somewhere a third of the way back instead of just below the jaw. The jaw itself was filled with black, razor tipped teeth, looking more like something expected from a dinosaur or old or some creature beyond what was considered natural. These were not the teeth to rend sustenance, these were teeth meant to cause pain and death.
The spiny remains of wings completed the image. These were the dusty bones of a demon. There was no other explanation for them. How could these remains have been from some civilized creature?
Something bright caught Jo's eyes, sitting just off the center of the horrible skull. She approached it, trying to decide what exactly she was seeing. She reached out and touched it, finding it was quite solid and quite real. It was gold and black, and resembled a handle of some kind. She wrapped a gloved hand around it and pulled.
The skull crumbled into a cloud of dust as the object came free in her hand. As it settled she could finally make out what she was holding.
It was a sword!
It wasn't the size sword a creature of that stature would carry. It was just over three feet long, with a delicate curvature, ending in a long chiseled tip. It looked for all the world like a Japanese long sword of old.
"Don't touch anything else." Susan warned. "We don't want to destroy any more of this until we can document it.
Jo didn't seem to hear her. She could see her reflection in the bright blade. Strange characters were carved into the blade, running about a foot from the tang. None of them were familiar to her, but that seemed not to bother her in the least. Was this what caused the demise of the demon?
"Oh my lord." Teep said in a low voice.
He was bending over something at the edge of the lower level. It was hidden from Jo's view by his environment suit. Soon she heard the telltale sounds of a portable scanner.
Teep stood up and said one word. "Human."
Jo finally tore her eyes away from the sword and joined Susan beside Teep. At his feet was another skeleton, and, just as he said, it was obviously human. The man would have stood about six feet tall when alive. Now the bones were his only testament. A large gash at the top of the skull might have been an indication how the poor soul died. Most likely at the hands of the beast.
Perhaps they had been the doom of each other, the man burying the sword in the creature as it struck him down in turn.
Teep looked back at his scanner. "Now that is really weird."
"What's that?" Susan asked, looking over his shoulder at the readout.
"I did a scan for DNA since I was verifying the skeleton was human. I didn't have the comparison files I needed loaded on this unit since this isn't what I was expecting to scan for, so I did a quick scan of the three of us, just to be sure."
"So, it's close enough to any one of us to mean it's human. We can run more sophisticated tests when we get back to the crawler." Susan said.
"That's not it! See this? These are base pairs. One of the comparison samples is closer than the other two to the skeleton."
"And?" Jo asked, not sure where he was going.
"If that many base pairs are the same, it means the two donors are related in some way by blood."
"You mean that dead guy has the same DNA as one of us?" Susan asked, a horrified expression forming on her face.
"Not the same DNA, but related. Logically, this would mean this is an ancestor of one of us." He explained.
"Well, which one?" Susan almost shouted.
"Hold on, I didn't label the scans. I've got to run them one more time." He passed the scanner over himself and both women."
"Jo, meet your new family member." He said finally, pointing to the bones.