The Siege of Sirius Page 7

  “Dr. Pierce?” Foster said, giving him a nudge.

  Pierce looked at the weapon Chevallier had offered him, and did nothing but stare at it in awe. Chevallier suspected that a man with all his university degrees had never held a weapon, let alone looked at one. It was a troubling thought given his age, he had to have been alive during the invasion and lived through it. Every person she met that was an adult during 2018 had fired a gun or at least kept one on them on them for self-defense. Even cities that were never attacked during the war had a brief period of lawlessness when everyone had to look out for their own interests. Vancouver was clearly not one of those cities.

  Pierce looked away from the ePistol and apprehensively glanced at Chevallier. “I’ve never held a weapon in my life.”

  Yeah, no shit.

  “Why do I need it? Aren’t you guys supposed to watch over us?”

  Chevallier sighed and forced the weapon into his hands. “If we get separated, knocked out or killed, who will watch your ass?” She pointed to the pistol. “That will.”

  McDowell, Chevallier, and Kingston armed themselves with eRifles before heading toward the open transport along with Foster and Pierce. A woman wearing an IESA uniform with the flag of the Philippines entered and shouted for the group to wait for her.

  “Rivera, you coming with us too?” Foster said to her.

  “Naw, my place is in engineering for now,” Rivera replied. “But I wanted you guys to have this.”

  Rivera handed Foster and Pierce devices that looked like the holo pads everyone had been using. These however were different, smaller with a small sensor up top, similar in design to medical scanners.

  “What the hell are these?” Foster said, eying the handheld device.

  “Something I was working on during my shifts in and out of cryo on our trek here,” Rivera said. “It’s an EAD, Environment Analyzer Device. I took apart a few of the holo pads we had that had glitches and rebuilt them into these; you can use them to scan the area around you. It’s also linked with EVE’s processors aboard where she can perform a more detailed analysis as well as catalogue and store your findings.”

  Foster activated the device, a small holographic window appeared above it, and it reported the findings the EAD detected. “Sounds handy.”

  “Very handy,” Pierce said as he gave it a test. “I might be able to choose samples to bring back to study, rather than grab everything.”

  Rivera gave them a quick rundown on how to use all the features of the device. It was a lengthy conversation that had her and Pierce spit out technobabble none of the military folks like Chevallier understood. Chevallier noticed that McDowell and Kingston had floated into the transport and took a seat up in the cockpit, she followed suit as well and hoped the IESA folks would hurry up and get on. Foster and Pierce eventually glided aboard, giving Kingston the green light to begin the transport’s prelaunch procedures as the doors slid shut.

  “EVA suits are in the back,” Chevallier said to Foster and Pierce. “Make sure to keep your shields up, this planet is getting a nice dose of X-ray radiation from the star.”

  “And we plan to harvest it for water?” Kingston said as he began to pilot the transport out and away from the Carl Sagan.

  “We got some good water treatment systems on the colonization ring,” Foster said. “It should filter out all radiation and other contaminates that might be in the ice.”

  Chevallier moved up front as Foster and Pierce began to suit up. She took a quick look at the planet as they began to descend through its dark clouds. Earthlike gravity took hold of them as the transport dipped into the planet’s exosphere, waves of red light splashed across the forward shields generated by its rapid entry into the atmosphere. Once past the cloud cover they got a better view of the surface and the scores of alien structures below them. Foster and Pierce entered the cockpit to observe their approach to the surface.

  “Set us down over there,” Foster said and pointed. “It’s close to the frozen ocean and that structure.” Kingston complied and adjusted the transport’s course.

  “Excited, Pierce?” Foster asked him.

  “You have no idea. First contact with Radiance and Hashmedai was one thing, but this? No one from Radiance made it out here, we’ll be the first.”

  Chevallier smirked. “Maybe the Empire did.”

  “There’s no proof of that,” Pierce replied to her.

  “Because the empire shares all their knowledge with Radiance, right?”

  Kingston grimaced. “Running into Hashmedai out here would be—”

  “Not boring like it is now?” Chevallier cut in.

  “Bad was the word I had in mind ma’am.”

  “Tolukei did say he detected psionic energy down here,” Foster said. “Radiance and the Hashmedai are the only two groups that could use such powers, if Radiance isn’t here then that kinda narrows it down.”

  “Yes,” Pierce said snapping his fingers to the best of his ability considering they were wrapped inside of the gloves of his suit. “That would mean there’s another species out there that knows how to use psionic powers.”

  “Didn’t psionics originate from Radiance? How would they get it?” Chevallier said.

  As she recalled, Radiance legends told that their gods arrived at the Aryile home world and gave them all sorts of technology over the years, one of them being a device that could allow people to develop psionic powers. That same tech was shared with the Hashmedai Empire before the two species had a falling out and became enemies.

  The transport landed on the icy surface as Pierce gave his answer to her question. “Only one way to find out!”

  UNE TRANSPORT

  Frozen tundra, SB-417, Sirius B system

  May 19, 2050, 09:34 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  McDowell, Chevallier and Kingston got up and began to place their combat helmets on. A holographic HUD interface confirmed to her that the suits life-support systems had activated. According to sensor scans the surface temperature was somewhere around -150 degrees Celsius and had very little breathable air. Dr. Pierce scampered to the entrance like an excited kid on Christmas morning. Chevallier took one look at the condition of Pierce’s suit, shook her head, and grabbed onto his arm, yanking his body to her.

  “You’re too excited, egghead,” she said to him.

  “We’ve been through this,” he said back.

  She tapped on his oxygen tanks, directing his attention to the fact that they weren’t properly connected to his helmet. “Don’t get yourself killed before we get the chance to leave the transport.”

  She saw him flush through the visor of his helmet as he began to rectify the problem. A quick double-check of everyone’s equipment followed before the transport’s doors opened. Its shields were left active to keep the hostile environment out. The shields were programmed to iris slightly and allow them to step past it, then instantly seal up to prevent loss of atmosphere.

  The shields onboard the Carl Sagan and other ships had the power to work the same way. If weapons needed to be fired with the shields active, they would open just enough to let projectiles through then quickly close. Transports and probes got a similar treatment as they were launched from the docking bay.

  Chevallier felt the ice beneath her feet crunch as they stepped onto the unexplored frozen planet. She looked up and saw the faint white light of Sirius B radiate down from the clouds and light from Sirius A which appeared as a slightly smaller bright blue and white object in the skies opposite of the white dwarf. Hills made up of glaciers littered the land, frozen shores that were once beaches became eternally crystallized when the planet began to freeze over. A layer of white mist hovered around the snow and ice cover pillars that encircled the alien-made buildings up ahead.

  “Well, where to first?” McDowell asked.

  Pierce began to walk ahead and scanned the ice around them with his EAD and said. “Well lets—”

  “I was asking the captain, egghead.”

  �
�Let’s check out the fort thingy up ahead,” Foster said pointing at the alien structure in the distance. “We got probes bringing back data on the ice anyways.”

  The five moved away from their transport and trekked across the snow and ice, generating a symphony of crunching footsteps as they neared the alien buildings. Foster and Pierce armed with their EADs took readings on every icy rock they came across. McDowell, Chevallier, and Kingston kept their rifles clasped in their hands, ready for the unexpected to leap out at them without notice.

  At the front of the alien building they found a staircase that rose toward its front entrance. It was covered in ice, almost as if water had been escaping from it during the big freeze. Pierce and Foster took more readings with their EAD and sent the data back to the Carl Sagan and EVE for further analysis. A group of frozen trees next to what appeared to have once been a garden caught Pierce’s attention.

  “How is this possible?” Pierce said, checking the readings of the frozen trees.

  Chevallier approached him and looked at the frozen garden up and down. “Well last time I checked when things get extremely cold, stuff like trees snap-freeze.”

  “These plants and trees shouldn’t exist,” Pierce said. “Not enough time passed by on this world for them to evolve.”

  “Maybe someone planted them?” Foster said.

  “Perhaps,” Pierce said and pointed at a small forest off in the distance. “That’s a lot of tree planting, though.”

  Everyone’s eyes shifted toward the open entrance of the structure, a place where none of the sensor scans could see, a place where none of the probes went. What awaited them there was a mystery no one from Earth, the empire, or union knew. McDowell, Chevallier, and Kingston were the first to take on the challenge of climbing up the slippery and frozen steps. Well it wasn’t much of a challenge for them as their combat armor was designed to work in all environments. The EVA suits the captain and science officer wore? Not so much. The two struggled for a bit, slipping a few times which generated laughs from the three triumphant Hammerhead members. Eventually they made it up and everyone entered inside the pitch-black chamber of the building.

  Helmet lights flickered on and illuminated the hallways before them, while the light from holograms of Foster and Pierce’s EAD glowed and continued to reveal their findings. The walls, ceiling, and floors where made of some sort of metal alloy. Statues were displayed along the walls, they looked like serpents, perhaps lizards? It was hard for Chevallier to tell, as many of them were damaged, while others were encased in ice that had spread from the ceilings.

  “For sure this is alien,” Pierce said as they ventured deeper in.

  McDowell chuckled. “Ya think?”

  “I mean the design of this place. It’s not Radiance or Hashmedai in design according to our knowledge of their species.”

  “An ancient building perhaps?” Foster suggested. “Both the empire and union had been traveling in space for centuries, the Linl too before they joined the union.”

  Pierce tapped one of the commands on his EAD and spoke into it. “EVE, is there anything in Radiance’s database that matches the layout and composition of this fortress?”

  A miniature version of EVE’s hologram appeared and hovered above Pierce’s EAD. “Accessing database, please standby,” EVE said. “Negative, Dr. Pierce, ancient structures built by the Hashmedai and Radiance races are different to what you have discovered. Furthermore, it is unlikely this structure is related to the Lyonria.”

  Chevallier cocked her eyebrow. “The what?”

  “Lyonria, an extinct ancient civilization,” Pierce said.

  “Never heard of them,” Foster chimed in.

  “It’s something Radiance never really spoke a lot of,” Pierce said. “They discovered several of their ruins throughout the galaxy. It should all be included in the Radiance database if you want to brush up on it.”

  EVE’s projection began to speak. “Please keep in mind, Radiance at the time of our departure from Earth knew only fragments about the Lyonria. This could be an early construct of theirs, or perhaps a later one that was not documented by Radiance scholars.”

  “Meaning?” McDowell grunted.

  “We either found a new type of Lyonria ruin,” Pierce said. “Or we found a totally new race.”

  They stopped as they entered a large central chamber. Motion detectors, or something similar, detected their presence as they entered. Lights, bright lights, powered on and revealed what was before them. They had arrived inside a circular room. There were three ring-shaped platforms, one on the outer edge, one in the middle, and a smaller one in the center, and a deep, seemingly bottomless pit below. Oval shaped objects were along the walls while an object that resembled a holding device rested on the middle ring.

  “OK,” Chevallier said looking around. “This is cool.”

  A bridge appeared as they approached the ledge, it stretched out and connected with the remaining ring-shaped platforms. They casually walked across the bridge, looking around for any danger, and taking scans of the apparatus around them, and the central ring with the strange-looking storage container. Pierce performed lengthy scans of it and carefully reviewed the data that populated his holographic screen.

  “There’s your psionic,” he said. “There’s someone inside, possibly a person, and there’s psionic energy bleeding away from it.” He took another look at his readings. “Actually, there’s a lot of psionic energy here.”

  “A tomb perhaps?” Foster said as she stepped closer to it.

  Perhaps too close.

  The containment device activated and began to emit waves of blue energy that rippled through the chamber. Survival instincts kicked in and three rifles rose up expecting danger. No such danger was detected, at least not through Chevallier’s targeting scanner.

  “What the hell was that?” Kingston asked as he looked about through the scope of his weapon.

  The blue energy waves returned and moved up and down the bodies of the five quickly. Then over their weapons, very slowly.

  “I think we’re the ones being scanned now,” McDowell said.

  “Leave.” A mysterious voice groaned from inside of their heads.

  Or so Chevallier hoped. If not, she was hearing voices. “Did you hear that?” Chevallier asked.

  “What, the wind blowing through the halls?” McDowell said.

  “No, someone spoke.”

  “All I hear is the wind—”

  “Leave!”

  “Oh, you mean that voice . . .”

  “Yeah, I heard that,” Foster said. “EVE what’s the source of that voice?”

  Static. There was nothing but disconcerting static on their comm lines.

  Pierce checked his EAD and saw that their connection to the Carl Sagan had been cut, as indicated by a flashing red error message.

  “What’s wrong?” McDowell asked Pierce.

  “We lost contact with the Carl Sagan.”

  Foster activated her communicator. “Carl Sagan this is Captain Foster, what’s your status?”

  Silence and static.

  “This is Commander McDowell to all UNE navy personnel can you hear me?”

  Silence and static.

  “I guess there’s some sort of interference in here?” Chevallier said.

  “My scans were being uploaded to EVE just fine a second ago—”

  “Leave!” The strange intimidating voice yelled into everyone’s heads.

  Foster retorted. “OK, fine, geez we’re going!”

  The lights in the room shut off, forcing everyone to rely once again on their helmet lights to see ahead of them. And what they saw was something sending back strange readings to Foster and Pierce’s EAD.

  The oval-shaped objects along the walls began to shimmer, and in the center of them an image appeared. It looked like the interior of a ship, or perhaps a base. Armored humanoid creatures marched through as if it was a portal. They looked like soldiers straight out of the Bronze Age only t
heir faces were completely covered. Some were armed with handheld shields in one hand, and a spear like object in the other, azure light emitting from the tip. They stood with authority like fearless generals, as another set of armored humanoid creatures moved past them, limping almost like zombies as they aimed large devices mounted on their arms at the five. Chevallier suspected they were weapons, but hoped she was wrong.

  McDowell, Chevallier, and Kingston placed themselves in front of Foster and Pierce, seconds before aliens emerging from the portals opened fire with something that Chevallier could only describe as laser fire. They took the first set of blows, officially giving them permission to start firing back as the aliens unveiled themselves as being hostile. She, along with the rest of her team, returned fire and delivered a hail of bullets toward their attackers before taking cover behind the tomb-like container.

  Chevallier looked out from her cover and analyzed new tactical data that appeared as holographic projections in her helmet. She saw that the aliens that took point had their laser weapons mounted in their hands as they fanned out, relentlessly hurling additional red beams of light at them. The overlord-looking aliens armed with spears and shields simply stood back behind the laser-wielding grunts and yelled words in their language.

  Chevallier jerked her head backward as more lasers shot at her, analyzing their enemy would have to wait for later. Her rifle once again began to scream its battle cry, she hoped it was loud enough to send the message that they were prepared to fight, because as it stood, they were outnumbered as even more alien soldiers stepped out of the oval portal.

  The limping laser grunts were fearless, more so than the overlords. They had no shields protecting them judging by the bullet holes Chevallier dug into the chest of one. It kept on limping toward them, shooting, oblivious to the damage done to it, the pain it should be experiencing, and most frightening of all, making no attempt to dive for cover. Scratch that, most terrifying of all, the grunts that did die rose again as their overlords behind slammed the butt of their spears on the floor.