At least she was going to be safe from Concordance for the rest of her days. The problem was, it also meant they were going to be safe from her, and that was something she couldn't allow. She studied the telemetry streams in closer detail. Local space around the Dragon was filled with a scatter of stray molecules, plasma and dust particles, and their variety and signature was consistent with the galactic space she was used to seeing. That was something. Maybe they weren't completely cut off. The ship's high-sensitivity gravity detectors also registered a very large number of distant masses, in all directions. More good news: it at least suggested they were inside a galactic mass, even if it wasn't necessarily the correct one.
“Head for the star.”
“Under reaction drive?”
She couldn't afford to wait the years that would take even at maximum acceleration. She thought about consulting her personal copy of Ondo, then decided against it. He would only recommend caution. “Make microjumps to bring us nearer.”
“Is that wise, given the seemingly anomalous physics of this region of space?” The ship's tones were neutral, but it was hard not to read disapproval into its question.
“Probably not, but that's what we're going to do,” she said. “Maintain full readiness to escape on Sen's egress route in case … bad things happen.” She considered the star. It would have started small and would have shed much of its mass over its long lifetime. They could afford to get closer than usual and still have a good chance of making an emergency escape into metaspace. “Jump to the 75% safety boundary, and we'll see what's there.”
“That means a 25% chance that we won't survive the translation.”
It was her turn to teach the ship some sarcasm. “Thanks for the help with the higher mathematics. We'll take those odds.”
They completed four jumps in-system, shorter and shorter until they reached the 75% boundary. There was no sign of pursuit, nor of any Concordance activity. A single rocky planet orbited the star, a mere twenty million kilometres from the sun's surface. It had little magnetosphere and no atmosphere, the star bathing its surface in hard radiation. It wasn't the sort of place anyone was going to be living.
“There are several oddities about this solar system,” said the Dragon.
“Such as the fact that the universe isn't old enough for the star to exist.”
“That, and the curious nature of the planet. According to my calculations, it may once have grazed the surface of the sun. Its path may even have lain inside the stellar mass.”
Inside. That made no sense. A planetary body couldn't survive such stresses. It couldn't even have formed in the first place: its atoms would have become part of the star, not a distinct body and certainly not a rocky one. There had to be some other explanation, but the only one she could come up with was deliberate design by some advanced intelligence. A species with a capacity for stellar engineering far in advance of anything she or Ondo knew of. Was Concordance capable of such feats? It seemed unlikely, but then there was the fact of their ships and their solar shrouds and their rise to galactic domination. And if Concordance had formed this system, it really might be a trap after all. A deliberately intriguing galactic anomaly.
Dread continued to trickle through her. There would be no escape from this bubble of space if a halo of Cathedral ships arrived in-system; she would never be able to fight her way through them. How many other renegades had come here over the centuries, lured by intriguing tales to meet a quick end? She had to suppress the urge to flee, to turn and head for the egress point. No enemy ships had, in fact, arrived. She counted seconds to herself, forcing herself to remain motionless, and still no attacks came.
While these thoughts thudded through her, another part of her brain studied the telemetry streaming in from the tiny planet. She'd fired high-g nanosensors towards it, the devices manoeuvring to study the world from different angles, slowly revealing more of its surface.
She saw the features at the same moment the Dragon spoke. “There appear to be structures upon the surface of the planet.”
At high magnification the details were unmistakable: straight lines arranged into patterns that had to be artificial. Neither she nor the Dragon knew of a natural phenomenon that could explain them. The largest, at the centre of a cluster of radiating markings, was a perfect triangle. She estimated its scale at thirty metres to the side. Whether it was simply the footprint of a now-ruined construction, or a complete building, or something else entirely, she had no way of telling. It lay precisely in the centre of the disk pointing towards the star. From her initial calculations, the two bodies appeared to be tidally locked. The triangular body would always be trained upon the sun's surface. Again, it seemed unlikely to be a natural phenomenon.
Local space remained untroubled by Concordance incursion. She came to a decision. “Take us into orbit. While I go down to the surface, return to this extraction point and wait. If Concordance arrive and you calculate you can escape, get back to Ondo and report on everything that's here. Make sure he knows not to try entering Dead Space again.”
She skimmed the lander low across the surface of the dark side of the rocky planet while the Dragon lifted out of orbit for its egress point. Turned always away from the sun, the surface below was only a hundred degrees off absolute zero. Despite this, it was glassy smooth, no sign of the
