“I don’t see the captain,” Rivera said.
“Neither do I,” he added as they both looked at the dormant wormhole.
“Should we open it back up?”
Williams considered that thought for a moment only to look at the displaced people around them. Many of them were in need of medical attention and still shaken up from the battle. Then there were the aliens at the other side, who was to say they weren’t standing guard waiting for them to reopen it? Williams and Rivera were just two people, two people who weren’t soldiers. They weren’t set up for a large-scale battle to start with, or a rescue mission.
Getting the people around him into the hands of doctors was his top priority, Foster risked her life to get those people out of danger. If she had been killed and he abandoned these folks, then her death would have been for nothing. Then there was Tolukei who was still out cold on the floor suffering from something, while his presence made the aliens retreat.
“We need to get this situation under control before we act further,” Williams said. “Need a damn transport to get these people out of here.”
“That storm,” Rivera reminded him.
“I know, I know.”
“I could modify the shields of some of our transports to give them an extra kick.”
“That requires you to be back on the Carl Sagan doesn’t it?”
Rivera approached him while she brought up a holographic map of the planet on her holo pad. “If we have a transport from our newly established colony fly close to the ground, they might be able to survive the trip here. From there it will be a task of flying away from the storm while keeping low, then back into orbit.”
“That’s gonna take time, but I guess it’s the only option,” he said, then established a communication link. “Williams to Carl Sagan, have Dr. Kostelecky and a medical team head to the surface and await further instructions.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Rivera, when the transport arrives to pick you up, we’ll have the doctor do what she can for the wounded.”
She nodded. “Let’s hope they get here fast.”
18 CHEVALLIER
Ocean surface
SC-149, Sirius C system
May 21, 2050, 12:01 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Chevallier’s hand wrapped around the first solid object she encountered during her twelve-hour tour of the ocean via the tsunami express. Whatever the object was, it was stationary, and put an end to her drift in the currents as she tried to reorientate herself and get used to the feeling of not being tossed about by raging waters.
She activated the headlights on her damaged helmet lighting up a path within the darkness that had now enveloped her and the region, all while continuing to ignore the low oxygen and shields down alarms that had been screeching repeatedly for gods knows how long. She glimpsed at her hand she had used to catch a hold of the object keeping her in place, shining her helmet light on it. The object she held onto was metallic, something constructed by an intelligent being. She saw more of the object as she turned her head to the side, it was large and part of it was above the surface of the water attached to some sort of craft. She found large grooves on the side of the craft and used them to pull her body up along it and out of the ocean.
Nightfall had fallen, tiny clouds in the skies obscured many of the stars above including Sirius B, which looked like a full moon on Earth. Chevallier was able to get a better look at the craft now that her head was above water. It was definitely a ship, though the make of it was unknown to her as she climbed up top as it floated on the violent waters. Rust was a prominent feature on the exterior of the ship while the sides of it showed signs of fires that had once burned uncontrollably, melting 60 percent of its surface.
She discovered what looked like a doorway into the ship, perhaps an airlock when it was spaceworthy. Both of her hands slid between the slits of the sliding door and forced it to slide open, the sounds of rusted metal grinding against its nonfunctioning joints were irritating. The interior of the ship was dark as expected though a few floor lights were still active, an indication that its reactor still had some juice left.
She pushed on deeper into the halls, her helmet’s lights guided her and prevented her from walking into walls while her HUD relayed tactical data back. This reminded her. She loosened her helmet and deactivated its life-support systems, taking in the fresh air around her. It made her gasp at first, the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere of the planet were a lot lower than she had been used to, and the sweltering heat that slipped into her suit didn’t help. But when you have less than twenty minutes of air left, you don’t complain. The downtime gave her the chance to scroll through the various error messages on her HUD. Low oxygen and shields she knew of, she flicked those messages away and began to eye the others she was oblivious to.
“Aw shit . . .” she moaned upon learning of the damage done to her suit.
The emergency broadcast beacon she had activated ceased to function shortly after the tsunami had hit. She was no longer transmitting a distress call to the Carl Sagan, so her only hopes of rescue now lay in the Carl Sagan picking up the first few minutes of her beacon before it was cut off.
The old rickety floors made a pathway through the corridor into the bridge, cockpit, command center, whatever the hell it was. She saw computer screens everywhere, on the walls, hanging down from the ceiling via a rectangular pole, and six up front neatly lined up with each other. Most were inoperable, the shattered screens were a dead giveaway. Those that still operated, flicked on as she stepped closer, some form of motion sensor detecting her presence as she sat down on a chair, its material showing the signs of aging over the years that had passed.
Familiar letters appeared across the screen of the newly activated computer to her side, she leaned her face closer to read the green, white, and black colors the screen projected. The text was written in the Linl language, a language she knew all too well from her earlier days in the navy, and the on again, off again relationship she’d had with the former shipboard psionic of the ESV Wilfrid Laurier.
Years had passed since she read anything written in the Linl language, and so it took her several minutes to scan and scroll through the text. But like riding a bike, it came back to her quickly and with that came new questions. What was a Linl ship doing out in Sirius?
She found what appeared to have been the ships logs, its recent ones at least according to the date. And what a date at that, they were over two-thousand-years old. She accessed the first log, a snowy static-filled video recording played, the ship was once buzzing with a Linl crew. A Linl man sat next to the camera and began to speak in his native tongue, he wore a black-and-white latex outfit that shined as light hit it.
“This is Doctor Golvin, entering the first scientific log entry of the Talok’s Odyssey. It would seem my theory was correct,” the Linl man in the recording said. “The Lyonria were not responsible for the uplifting of the aquatic species in this system, despite evidence that suggests they had colonized this system during their apex. Someone else was responsible for bringing the aquatic species into this system, someone else that had access to interstellar technology during the age when the Lyonria controlled the galaxy. There are other species out there, vast galactic empires with technology we could only dream of having. What a time to be alive.”