environment suits.” Ensign Otis announced, a junior scientist from the opposite side of the oval command centre.
Kathryn’s screen suddenly blazed into life, almost taking on a life of its own as vast amounts of data and recordings streamed across the display.
“What, in the blue hell is that!” She said; peering wide eyed in amazement at her screen.
“Show me,” Akimbe said in excitement, moving as fast as his body would allow.
Kathryn brought up a high definition scan of what appeared to be a gigantic metallic looking structure, pointing skyward from the planet surface towards them. It closely resembled that of an enormous eye, peering up at the ship. The sight gave Kathryn a cold shudder down her spine; she didn’t know whether it was excitement at this new discovery, or fear.
“My god,” Akimbe gasped, glancing over Kathryn’s shoulder. “That thing must measure three kilometres wide, any power readings or signs of life down there?”
Kathryn glanced over the readings again. “Nothing, the whole structure seems to be abandoned. Although whatever it is made of is throwing off my scanners, it appears to be some sort of new metal; it isn’t even on the periodic table. Judging by the level of corrosion, it looks to have been defunct for around three hundred years.”
“Could be the remains of a dead civilisation,” Akimbe offered.
“If so, why aren’t there any other buildings or traces of habitation, just this one giant structure.”
“Maybe they were swept away or buried in some natural disaster?” Akimbe didn’t have any real answers either; he was as befuddled as Kathryn.
“We’ll have to send a team to investigate, if we are to know for sure.”
“I agree, prepare a landing shuttle.”
“Pryor, Gomez, you’re with me,” Kathryn announced as she left the command centre with the two scientists in tow.
“Kathryn, I don’t have to tell you to be careful down there. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with,” Akimbe said with a warm but ever so slightly concerned smile, just as he sank himself back down into the worn and faded command chair.
Kathryn returned the smile as she turned back to face the aged captain, touched by his concern for her welfare, “Don’t worry captain, I will.”
With that, the science team left the bridge and made their way down to the shuttle deck. She picked some other scientists she thought would be useful in the exploration of that strange place. In total, the team was made up of six members, Dieter Kalschacht, the noted German physicist. Mira Romaine, a talented chemist. A fellow geologist by the name of Matthew Broadhurst, Lieutenant James Pryor a specialist in both spacial and planetary meteorology, and finally Pablo Gomez a Mexican trained extensively in xeno-archeology.
The science team was escorted by a ten man squad of troops from the sixty ninth Sicarian guards infantry division, assigned to the Copernicus to safeguard the scientists onboard when exposed to potentially threatening environments, such as this.
The sixteen strong group all boarded the long shuttle, vaguely resembling that of a 20th century executive jet. Although in spaceflight mode its wings and tail were retracted safely inside its elongated bullet shaped fuselage.
Inside, it was cramped, in part due to the press of bodies. Typical E.D. F shuttles normally carried a maximum of ten men, this one was being asked to carry sixteen, and their equipment as well.
The shuttles powerful solid fuel booster engines roared into life, echoing throughout the empty shuttlebay, its anti-gravity motors gently lifted it clear of the bay floor just as the bay doors opened. With a gigantic roar, the turbofans increased to full power and the tiny craft accelerated out from the rear shuttlebay of the Copernicus and out into the inky blackness of deep space. Leaving the comparatively enormous survey ship far behind, before banking gently and heading for the beige hued planet below.
Matthew, piloting the shuttle, deftly made some slight course corrections, so that the craft could enter the planets atmosphere at just the right angle. The small vessel quickly began to heat up as it descended through the upper atmosphere of Auriga III, increasing in speed as the planet’s gravity took hold, pulling the small craft closer to the surface.
The shuttle punched through the roiling carbon dioxide and methane clouds in the atmosphere, and deployed its delta wings and tail for normal atmospheric flight.
Kathryn ventured a look from the port side viewport next to her seat, as the craft sped toward its destination. She could make out deep rocky windswept valleys, and tall jagged mountains rising up from the surrounding flatlands; though there was very little in the way of habitation, the planet seemed barren, forlorn, bereft of life.
That was, until the occupants got their first glimpse of the massive, angular structure they had viewed from orbit.
2. Discoveries
It was absolutely enormous in size, six massive dull metallic pylons seemed to reach up, high into the sky. Looking like great claws sprouting out from the planet surface. These ‘claws’ surrounded what appeared to be a giant cannon-like aperture in the centre, a massive sinkhole that extended into pitch darkness.
The shuttle circled the massive dark installation, its sullenness gave Kathryn a second gentle shudder down her spine.
“My god, that thing must be almost three kilometres in diameter.” Romaine said, awestruck at the sheer scale of the long defunct facility.
“It looks like nothing we have ever seen before,” Kalschacht added.
To Kathryn though, the structure looked as bereft as its surroundings, lost in the mists of time. Even here, looking upon it from the safety of the interior of the shuttle, the sight gave her tiny goose bumps. Nevertheless, she had a job to do so she swallowed her fears. “It resembles Solarian architecture with it having a grand, almost organic like form, with lots of flowing curves, instead of our own rugged utilitarian style.”
“There are some notable differences, however.” Gomez replied, “take a look at the tips of the pylons, they are not curved gently like traditional Solarian designs, instead they appear to be sharp, almost blade-like.”
“It’s dark as well, the metal is like some sort of non-reflective anthracite, I don’t recall the Solarians ever using a material like that.” Broadhurst pointed out, as he gently manoeuvred the shuttle in for landing, deploying the landing legs as he did so.
“Either way, we’ll know more when we get inside,” Kathryn added.
The shuttle gently touched down on a small area of flat ground not far from the edge of the pylons. The occupants all donned their environment suits, clicking their helmets into place and checking the hermetic seals were all secure and not leaking, before disembarking from the shuttle.
The guards all fanned out, forming a small hemisphere around the site of the shuttle and the scientists. The craft behind them continued gently thrumming, as the turbines of the boosters slowly came to rest.
The wind had certainly grown stronger, everyone could feel the chill in the air through the outer layers of their suits. It was all Kathryn could do to prevent herself from being blown over. Hearing the howling winds through the glass in her helmet, she ventured a look across Auriga’s mountainous landscape, the planet’s twin moons were approaching their zenith high in the night sky, the double moonlight cast upon the surface made it perfectly bright enough to see.
She tried to shout into her helmet mic. over the winds that whipped by them all. “We need to look around, see if we can find some sort of entrance into the structure!”
“Understood,” the other scientists all said in unison.
The group began to split up into teams of two, and started combing the derelict surface. Gigantic pylons loomed over them, casting some of them into shadow, and reaching up well over two thousand metres into the night sky.
Kathryn ran her hands over the various panels and indents, carved with such a precision, such an intricate attention to detail, E.D. F scientists could not better it. The wind that blew through this place gave off an eerie howl as it whistled by the edges of the pylons.
