Burnt Worlds (30 page)

“Aye aye, sir.
 
Starting at the top, then counter-clockwise.
 
Got it.”

The petty officer turned toward the other alien building and started walking, climbing a waist-high drift as he went.
 
He had switched to the squad channel, and Saparun heard his voice shift to the background, directing two of the team to take their datapads to the door, and the rest to ‘keep an eye out’ and ‘look alive’.
 
Sap made a mental note to make sure those were on the list he was keeping: a collection of sorts, of human phrases, sayings and idioms.
 
He already had, he believed, a ‘shitload’ of them.
 
Still smiling, he glanced over at Cho, whose beaming face was watching him through his visor.

“Ready when you are.”
 
A particular favourite of his.

Cho blinked, as if suddenly distracted from a thought, and brought his forearm computer up in front of his visor.
 
He poked at the display with his gloved right hand, while stepping closer to the door.
 
“Okay, helmet is recording. “

The Lieutenant fidgeted, idly tapping his hand on the door of the structure.
 
He was finding it difficult to think of something to say.
 
Here he was, leading a Navy team ashore on an alien world, about to push open the door and step into this small building.
 
The biggest day of his life so far, his most significant achievement, and it was entirely likely that his family would never hear about it.
 
Their ship would be declared missing, then lost; a small memorial service, perhaps a flag for his adoptive parents to remember him by.
 
His shoulders slumped, the smile draining from his face, and he started to turn away from the door.

The Mechanic’s green eyes found his, and the suited Dosh gave him a smile and a nod.
 
“Go for it, Lieutenant.”

“I feel I should say…” he trailed off.
 
He didn’t know what he felt he should say.

Saparun shook his head.
 
“Don’t bother thinking of something profound.
 
We’ll make it up later.”

Cho turned back toward the door, feeling the gentle nudge of the Dosh’s fingertips on his back.
 
He reached his hands in front of him, placed his palms on the door’s smooth dark surface, and pushed.

The door yielded to his touch, retreating a hand’s width into the room before pivoting toward the right, swinging out of the way.
 
Cho leaned closer to the dark, gaping hole in the wall, letting the light from his helmet spill into the space beyond.

“Empty.”

“Huh,” said Saparun, leaning to look past Cho.
 
“The Chief owes me ten bucks.”

The Lieutenant put his hands on the edges of the doorway, slowly leaning into the small square building.
 
He stepped inside, the floor under his feet made of the same dark metallic surface as the rest of the structure.
 
Five paces to the far wall and just as wide, there was no furniture, no adornment, no objects of any sort inside the building.
 

Stopping in the centre of the small room, he looked around at the empty space.
 
Saparun came into the room behind him, their two helmet lights playing off the surfaces around them.

Something was catching Cho’s eye.
 
“The walls, Sap…”

The light from the Mechanic’s helmet swung around to the same point on the wall illuminated by Cho’s beam.
 
“The walls, Lieutenant?
 
I don’t… oh, I see.”

The wall’s polished surface appeared rough in patches, missing its shine.
 
As Saparun stared at the wall, the patches of dull wall resolved themselves into geometric shapes.
 
Small squares and triangles, arranged into simple pictures.
 
Two squares, with a tall triangular spike between them; the square on the left had a small humanoid figure drawn inside it.
 
“Wait, is this here?” he asked, stepping closer.
 
As he moved, the image suddenly changed, with a few stylised plants sprouting from the ground around the shapes of the buildings.
 
“
Pak
, it moved!” he gasped, recoiling away from the wall.
 
As he did, the plant-like shapes disappeared.
 

Cho reached out a hand to steady the Dosh, not taking his eyes off the wall.
 
“I didn’t see it.” After a moment’s hesitation, he took a step closer to the wall.
 
“Oh, neat,” he said, “I get it.
 
The wall’s been etched.”

“Ah,” breathed the Mechanic, taking small steps back and forth.
 
“Different images from different angles.
 
Distance based?” he wondered aloud, bending over to get a closer look.
 
“No, height based.”

Cho stood up on tiptoe, then slowly began to lower himself until he was in a crouch.
 
“Okay, looks like it’s this planet… cities and forests, lots of life, then some ships came.
 
Levelled the cities, then the plants died, then these buildings appeared.
 
Then someone standing in the one building — us, I guess, and the other building…”
 
As he leaned downward, the image of the second square building erupted into hundreds of smaller squares that burst upward into the sky.
 
A lead weight dropped into his stomach as he jabbed at the computer on his arm.
 
“Lee!” he cried.
 
“Stop!
 
Do not open that building!”

Saparun lunged toward the open door, Cho following behind.
 
As he ran out into a sand drift, he heard Lee’s calm voice come through his helmet.
 
“We just got it open, sir.
 
You had better come look at this.”

-----

When they got to the other building, Lee was standing outside the door waiting for them.
 
The rest of the crewmembers were holding a wide perimeter, either standing atop dunes or walking carefully between them.

Lee jerked his thumb toward the open door.
 
“Door’s open, sir, but nothing’s been touched and no one’s been inside.
 
Strange looking thing in there.”

Cho peered in the door.
 
The light from his helmet was reflected right back in his face.
 
Turning his head slightly, he saw the room’s only content.

A massive cube of smoky glass stood in the centre of the room.
 
As tall as Cho and as wide, it filled the building save for a narrow aisle around the outside.
 
Light that struck the cube was fragmented and broken into smaller beams that danced on the chamber’s inside walls.

“Didn’t expect that,” said Cho.
 

The Dosh stood beside him, one suited hand holding up his datapad.
 
“It’s almost a perfect cube.
 
Not natural glass, but a synthetic crystalline material.
 
It’s… well, how about that.”

Cho turned to face Saparun.
 
He saw Lee look as well, a quizzical expression on his face.

“It’s not just a cube,” said the Mechanic.
 
“It’s assembled from millions of smaller bits.
 
Identical crystalline cubes, about ten millimetres each.
 
The size of, what would be the human approximation?”

“Dice?” asked Lee.
 
Cho and Saparun turned to look at him.
 
He shrugged, “Small ones.
 
Something like that.”

The Dosh returned his attention to his datapad, poking at it with one finger.
 
“Each small cube contains something, but my pad’s scanners can’t make it out.”

The petty officer unslung a piece of equipment from his back, and stepped forward to offer it.
 
“How about this, sir?
 
The ground scanner we were using earlier.”

“Thank you, Lee,” said Cho.
 
He took the scanner, deftly opening up an access panel and powering up the device.
 
He pointed it in through the building’s door, toward the massive cube.
 
After a brief moment, the display began to run with lines of data, scrolling too fast to read.
 
Cho tapped the display to stop it.

“So…” he began, reading the information on the display.
 
Saparun leaned in, trying to see over the Lieutenant’s shoulder.
 
“Huh,” grunted the Mechanic.

Cho lowered the scanner, looking reverently at the glassy bulk.
 
“My god.
 
Each crystal bit has traces of DNA in it.”

Saparun took the scanner from Cho, holding it up so he could see the readout.
 
“Each small cube is a different species, a few cells preserved in crystal.
 
The structure wasn’t finished, but the scanner counts…,” he read the line again, “…almost eight million pieces.
 
Eight million different species.”

Cho shook his head, his voice barely a whisper.
 
“It’s an ark.”

“Apparently so.”

“They knew… they knew the planet was dying, so they preserved every species—”

“Every species they could,” interrupted Saparun.
 
“The cube isn’t complete.”

“Okay, so they must have run out of time.
 
They saved everything they could, preserved it here, in the hopes they’d come back and re-seed the planet.”

“Or someone,” said the Mechanic.
 
“there’s nothing written anywhere, and the only information is in pictures.
 
They must have suspected the next people on this planet wouldn’t be them.
 
They hoped that whoever followed them would be able to do the reseeding.”

Cho tilted his head, looking at the Dosh out of the corners of his eyes.
 
“So, they thought
they
were dying out as well?”

The Mechanic offered a small shrug, one hand upturned.
 
“It fits.”

“Huh,” said Cho.
 
He put one hand on the edge of the door and leaned in, getting a closer look at the massive cube.
 
The beam of light from his helmet swung back and forth as he looked around the room.

Lee shifted his feet, his hands coming to rest on his hips.
 
“Orders, sir?”

Cho pushed against the doorframe, standing back upright, and stepped back from the building.
 
He pointed at the scanner in Saparun’s hands.
 
“Okay, set that up here.
 
Scan the cube, scan all the DNA in it.
 
A complete scan of everything in there.
 
And we’ll scan those images in the other building as well.
 
Record everything.”

The Mechanic looked at the device in his hands, rolling it over as he looked for a way to stand it on the ground.
 
“Scan the entire genetic code for eight million species?
 
That will take a little while.”

“Yeah,” said Cho absently.
 
“It’ll fill a few datapads as well.
 
Gather up the team’s pads that still work; we might need them all.”

-----

Master Seaman Singh was proud of her medical bay.
 
The counters, beds and other surfaces were clean, neat and well-organised.
 
Regular passes with the steriliser kept everything free from dirt, germs and other unwelcome micro-organisms.
 

She sat at the bay’s small desk: a short stretch of counter where the medical console was mounted.
 
Dragging her finger across the display, she scrolled through the results of her most recent round of testing. The ‘doggie drool’ infection that currently inhabited the Captain had been subjected to a battery of experiments, trying to find some drug or combination of drugs that would defeat the infection without producing life-endangering side effects.
 
His body’s normal immune response — including a very high fever — had only made the infection worse.
 
To keep his temperature down she’d been giving him Fevazon.
 
It wasn’t a solution, she knew, but it addressed the symptoms.
 

Her latest batch of twenty different drug combinations had all come back negative, which was frustrating.
 
She opened a new file, compiling a list of what combinations she could try next.
 
She was running out of ideas.
 
The Captain was taking large quantities of antibiotics, which were able to keep the infection from getting worse, but her stock was running low.
 
The Dosh Mechanic said that the organic fabricators weren’t sophisticated enough to create pharmaceuticals, but he’d see what he could do.
 

The silence was shattered by the sudden snap of the door unlatching, making her jump in her seat.
 
As the door opened, she put her hands down on the counter and took few deep breaths to calm herself.

Turning to look, she was surprised to see the Tassali enter the bay, her eyes searching for and finding the medic.
 

Singh came to her feet.
 
“Good evening, ma’am.”

The Palani woman smiled.
 
“Good evening, Master Seaman Singh.
 
Do you have a moment?”

“Of course, ma’am,” said Singh, motioning toward one of the examination beds.
 
The Tassali stepped further into the room, but didn’t sit down.
 
Although she had been in the medical bay before, she looked around as if here for the first time.