target as gently as autumn leaves landing in a grassy field.
All twelve pods landed within a forty-foot radius, their cargo bay doors opened, and the SEALs emerged. This was the first time man had set foot on a planet outside the Milky Way, a benchmark that meant nothing to Emerson Illych and his men. They had not come to explore. They had come to destroy.
Illych and his team knew what to expect. This planet was known as “A-361-F,” as it was the sixth planet from the star labeled “A-361.” A-361-F had an unbreathable atmosphere—a toxic cocktail of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane. Because it was so far from the sun, a foot-thick layer of poisonous frost covered its surface. Had they not been wearing atmosphere-adjusting combat armor, the SEALs would have frozen to death before they got a chance to die of asphyxiation.
Illych thought the planet looked a lot like Earth’s moon might have looked had it been frozen under ice. Nothing had color. The ground was gray. The sky was black. The SEALs had landed during the period that passed for day, but the sun was four billion miles away, and day on A-361-F looked a lot like night.
The SEALs did not waste time chatting about the dreary surroundings. They quietly checked to make sure they had not left gear in their pods and began their mission.
In the hours before the mission began, remote surveillance technicians had used satellite drones to map the planet. Designed for military use, the satellites were not equipped to take air samples from space. They tested for radiation, located nonnatural structures, recorded ground movement, and searched for possible targets. On this planet, the satellites found only one point of interest, an abandoned building complex.
Looking at the satellite reports, Yamashiro’s intelligence officers said that complex was “inactive,” possibly an abandoned fort or a fueling station for space travelers. They had no way of knowing if it belonged to the Avatari, the aliens who had created such havoc upon the Milky Way. The author of the report did speculate that the enormous cylindrical structures along one face of the complex might be storage silos, suggesting that the facility might have been used as a fuel refinery.
The land around the complex was completely flat, no hills or craters. A labyrinth of tunnels and trenches might have been hiding beneath the foot-thick frost; but if so, it was invisible to the recon satellites. To Illych’s eyes, the plain had no notable features except for the buildings.
Illych did not bother telling his men what to do, they already knew their assigned duties. The SEALs had trained together since the day of their manufacture, twelve years earlier. They knew their objectives and performed their duties.
The SEALs divided into three four-man reconnaissance teams. Illych led his team toward the complex itself. If the buildings had had walls, doors, or windows, the master chief and his men would have searched from outside, looking for guards or security equipment. No doors, no walls, no roof. More than anything else, the place was a tangle of pipes and chambers. Inch-thick frost had formed on the structure, creating gray camouflage over the jet-black metallic surfaces below.
The building stood no more than fifty feet tall, built on an open-faced foundation. Using the thermal lenses in his visor, Illych scanned the area for heat signatures. He found nothing. Either the structure was out of use, or the material flowing through the pipes was of a type that could not be frozen.
Illych and his team looked for signs of the Avatari. They searched the platform for doors and compartments, using the sonar and X-ray equipment in their helmets; then they used the enhanced handheld equipment that they had brought with them. The pipes and chambers were hollow, the foundation and the ground around it were solid.
One of the SEALs shined a laser on pipes and panels to test for vibrations and found nothing. Petty Officer Andrew Call aimed a torch at a patch of frost from a pipe that was so big around he could have stood in it. The gray layer turned to steam under the heat and quickly evaporated.
Speaking on an open frequency, Call asked Illych, “Do you want me to cut the pipe open?” He did not refer to the master chief as “sir.” By design, none of the cloned SEALs were officers.
“Didn’t you say the pipe is empty?” Illych asked.
“As far as I can tell.”
“What’s the point in cutting it open?”
“It will give us a chance to see what it’s made of,” said Call. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It X-rays easily, but I can’t find wires or circuits, none of the components you expect to find inside a machine. Whatever passes for power around here, it’s not electricity-based.”
Illych considered this. “Hold off,” he said. “For now, let’s just figure out what we’re dealing with.”
Illych stood at the edge of the foundation, tracing the shapes of the pipes that formed the structure. The building had an organic, random feeling. Like vines in jungle, the pipes weaved in and out in a haphazard braid. So much frost covered the pipes that they looked like an ice sculpture, but only a thin layer of powdery frost had formed on the foundation. Looking for footprints in that powder, Illych thought that centuries might have passed since the aliens had last visited the facility.
Using optical commands, he raised the volume of the sound sensors in his helmet so that he could better monitor the ambient sounds. He heard only the mouselike whisper of the wind and the footsteps of his men. The planet had a thin atmosphere, and much of it was frozen.
The master chief went to an N-shaped stand of pipes and tapped it with his finger. He could see the structure of the pipes deep inside a dirty frozen layer. Using a knife, he scraped the skin of the ice, letting the peelings fall into an analysis kit.
He checked the reading, saw nothing of importance, and scraped deeper. The kit checked for radiation, chemicals, and age. The content of the ice remained the same; but as Illych gouged deeper into the frozen sheath, the age changed. The readings struck Illych as odd, but he did not question the results.
“Do you think this belongs to the same aliens that invaded us?” asked Kapeliela.
“I’m sure of it,” said Illych.
“This place is weird. I never seen anything like it,” said Kapeliela.
“It looks like a refinery,” said Illych.
Kapeliela agreed. “Yeah, an abandoned refinery. That makes sense, but it’s been out of service for a long, long time.”
Chief Petty Officer Humble joined the conversation. “So what? It’s a refinery?”
Illych asked, “What kind of ships did the aliens fly when they attacked our planets?”
“They didn’t have …”
“You don’t need remote fuel depots once you stop flying ships,” Illych said.
Beside the building, a row of twenty-seven identical cylindrical structures rose out of the ground. They stood 970 feet tall. They had the same hyperbolic shape as the cooling towers of nuclear power facilities only turned upside down. The structures were wider at the top than at the base.
While Illych and his men surveyed the building, Chief Petty Officer Humble’s team studied the towers. Using equipment in his helmet, Humble measured the nearest tower—223 feet wide at the base and 352 feet wide at the top.
“You got anything?” Illych asked Humble.
“Yeah. It’s like these things are made of eggshells,” Humble said. “Once you get through all the ice, the walls are a twentieth of an inch thick. I’m surprised they don’t collapse under the weight of the ice.”
“Can you see inside it?” Illych asked.
“Yeah, they X-ray right up. They’re empty and hollow all the way down.”
“All the way down?” Illych asked.
“If you think this thing is tall, you should see how far down it goes.”
“How far?”
“Over a mile.”
“Do you think it’s a silo?” Illych asked.
“That’s my best guess; but it’s empty.”
Kapeliela waited for Illych to run out of questions, then asked one of his own. “Do we know if these pipes are made of the same stuff?”
“They aren’t as thin as eggshells,” Illych said. “It looks like this place was abandoned a long, long time ago. Some of the ice on these pipes is over a hundred thousand years old.”
That was when Illych saw the light. All of the SEALs saw it. A dull sun shone in the distance; but far brighter
