As Matthew Broadhurst pressed that tiny flickering control a deep low hum began to reverberate throughout the installation, everyone heard it. A low-pitched thrumming noise that felt like it was pounding the insides of their skulls, almost as if an ancient and powerful relic was coming to life once again.
Kathryn began to get very worried, “What have you done!” She shouted over the increasing din and steady vibrations building through the floor. The pounding steadily grew in its intensity, ceiling lights began to gradually flicker as they awoke from their three hundred year slumber. Console lights blinked and came to life, the awakening of this ancient facility had begun.
“Oh god!” She shouted nervously into her helmet mic. as she saw lights begin to dance across gradually activating consoles, the lights above them flickered more fervently as power grew. Suddenly Kathryn was rather scared of what they had just awakened.
The thrumming noise now took on a kind of rhythmic, pulsating sound, as though something truly massive was slowly beginning to rotate deep within the heart of the facility, this was made all the more clear as they could feel the gentle vibrations in the ground, continually building all around them.
Broadhurst had definitely awakened something, something so unimaginably powerful, they could neither comprehend nor control.
Kalschacht desperately searched the displays, muttering Germanic curses as he looked for some way to shut the infernal thing down again. Everything was written in an alien language that none of them could understand. Wall mounted displays began showing data streams no one could decipher.
Ensign Strandzhar, sitting at the sensory officer’s station on the Copernicus orbiting far above studied his screen, oblivious to the usual noise of people shuffling past, and others working at consoles. Suddenly he almost jumped out of his seat, “Holy moly! Err… captain, I think you might want to take a look at this.”
Akimbe turned in his seat, towards the startled young ensign, “what is it?”
“Something’s happening on the surface, sir. I don’t know what, but my sensors just went crazy.”
The captain made his way over to look at Strandzhar’s findings to judge for himself. “Hmmm…It looks like it is coming from the alien structure, a massive energy surge, it’s already off the scale and it seems to be increasing even further, Jesus Christ!”
Akimbe tried to make some sense of what he was reading, “what in god’s name can generate that kind of power? Any chance we can find out what type of energy source it is?”
“Negative, sir. Our sensors still can’t penetrate the exterior.”
Akimbe berated himself for his oversight, he already knew this; then wide eyed with shock asked, “the science team?”
“There’s no way to tell.”
Akimbe had only one option open to him as he raced back to his command seat, “full alert status, break orbit.” He had to assume the science team was dead, nothing could withstand an energy surge of that magnitude, not even his ship.
The bridge of the Copernicus took on a darkened tone, a ruddy glow played across the various consoles and surfaces as the ship went to red alert, panicked officers hurried to their positions all over the ship.
Just as the Copernicus was powering up its mighty engines to break orbit, a colossal incandescent beam of raw orange energy, shot out from the enormous aperture in the centre of the structure. Blindingly bright, like a ray of pure fire. The strength of the beam instantly atomised the methane clouds in its path, and raced through the planets atmosphere with all the fury of a rail-cannon shell. Within milliseconds, it had shot through the upper atmosphere and straight past the Copernicus; coating the ship in an intensely bright orange glow as it careered past it and hurtled out into deep space, before shutting down again.
It had missed vaporising the tiny survey vessel by a matter of feet.
“What in the name of god was that!” Akimbe shouted over the warning sirens, and wailing of the red alert klaxon.
“ A beam of pure energy captain, of what type, I have no idea,” Strandzhar replied.
“Is the alien structure still intact?”
“From what I can tell, yes sir. It seems as though the entire facility was designed to emit a beam of that magnitude.”
“A weapon?”
“If it is, it would be a clumsy one. It could only fire in a single direction, and only then at a stationary target.”
“True, but if that beam did hit, nothing would be able to withstand a direct hit from that kind of power.”
Kathryn and the rest of the panicked scientists were desperately trying to find some way to shut down the facility, to prevent a repeat of what had just happened. So far, they could find nothing they could understand.
The loud thrumming had diminished into a low barely audible groan, the station was definitely awake now, and it had awoken with an almighty scream too.
“Guys, come take a look at this,” she heard Gomez say from across the room, she and Kalschacht came over to join him.
“What is it?”
Gomez pointed toward a display, now fully lit, it was showing power readouts throughout the base, it also showed a three dimensional cross section of the entire facility.
“My god,” Kalschacht exclaimed in wonder, “the place is like a huge underground city, we haven’t even explored half of it.” He peered in closer, studying the three dimensional map in more detail, “If I’m looking at this right, the whole facility is built over a massive geo-thermal vent.”
“That would explain the temperature rises,” Kathryn cut in.
“The thrumming noise is a giant rotating collider, collecting the energy and exciting it, thereby turning the immense heat and pressure underneath into massive amounts of raw energy.”
He stepped back a moment, stoking his chin in contemplation, “This whole facility is nothing more than a super advanced, geo-thermal power station. Kathryn have you any idea of the amount of power a facility of this size can produce?”
Kathryn nodded blankly, “rather a lot, I guess.”
“Rather a lot is the under-statement of the decade, this facility can generate virtually unlimited power. If we can find a way to replicate this technology, we would have virtually solved E.O.C. A’s power needs overnight.”
He turned back to the display, “it must have some kind of collector somewhere, a means of storing the energy it produces.”
The physicist touched the display in an effort to find a control to zoom out of the facility, he quickly found that he could manipulate the representation by touch alone. Gradually managing to pan out, at first he could not see anything, then continued panning out further and further until he had zoomed out all the way to the upper atmosphere of the planet itself.
There it was, in orbit. What appeared to be a large collector, faintly resembling a mushroom, its under-surface was wide, in order to collect as much energy as possible from the beam that shot toward it, and was full of small energy cells, all of which must transfer the accumulated energy to a storage facility in the centre of the mechanised ‘mushroom’.
“This is showing that there is a collector,” Kathryn said, stating the obvious, “but our scans did not detect anything in the atmosphere when we entered orbit.”
“It’s showing there was a collector,” Gomez corrected for her, “don’t forget, the data is three hundred years old.”
“And no doubt in that time, the orbit of the collector would have decayed and burned up in the atmosphere long ago,” Kalschacht replied.
“But the facility still believes it is there; so is transferring its energy to it, as it would normally,” Broadhurst added.
“So what would happen to the beam of energy, now that the collector has burned up?” Kathryn asked, fearing the answer to her question.
“It would simply continue on its journey through space,” Kalschacht answered.
“Possibly hitting the Copernicus in the process?” It was the answer Kathryn had most feared. The realisation of the enormity of what had just happened hit all of them. “We need to get a message to the ship, see if they are okay up there.”
Kalschacht warned, “if a beam of that power has hit the Copernicus, the entire ship would be atomised within a split second, nothing could withstand it.”
The entire team exited the small control room and hurried back out onto the adjoining corridor, hurrying towards the elevator, it was easier going now as the lights were now fully lit, they could all see in front of them without having to resort to flashlights. Even though all the ceiling lights emitted was a soft, eerie, almost twilight like glow.
“Perhaps the inhabitants are sensitive to light,” Gomez offered as though reading Kathryn’s thoughts.
“Could be,” she replied breathily as she hurried.
They quickly made it to the end of the floor, and strangely enough, the elevator appeared right in front of them, fully operational. Inside there were several strange buttons within a panel near to the door. It consisted of a button for each floor, written in a form of roman numerals, although sharper as though each number was a weapon, like a dagger. There was a separate symbol, this was completely alien, none of them could understand it.
Using a process of elimination, they found that this symbol represented the surface, and so they pressed it.
The small elevator whipped them up to the surface at a speed of several hundred miles per hour, yet the occupants felt nothing, just the gentle sensation of the device picking up speed as it left off, together with a gentle deceleration as they closed with the main hatch itself.
They had to climb the few remaining steps to the entrance, and once back out to the howling winds of the surface, it was a struggle to stay on their feet.
Kathryn gingerly touched her wrist comm. as a powerful gust of wind buffeted her. “Jacobs to Copernicus, are you receiving?”
There was no answer.
“We’ll need to get to the shuttle and perform a scan to see if she is still in orbit!” Pryor suggested, shouting over the noise of the intense howling winds.
“Okay let’s go!”
It was only a short walk to where the shuttle was landed, but it felt like a trek battling against the prevailing winds. Strange we haven’t heard back from that corporal yet, Kathryn thought to herself.
They made it to the landing site, and she flipped open a small cover on the shuttle’s fuselage and pressed a control secreted within, slowly a side hatch opened, Kathryn gasped at what she saw, “my God!”
The reason they hadn’t heard back from Corporal Jankov was due to the fact that he was unconscious on the floor of the craft. His entire face horrifically burned, his nose none existent, just a mound of seared flesh, his lips nothing more than a cracked and scorched parody of a mouth. Worst of all his eyes had been completely burned out of their sockets, miraculously though, he was still breathing through that charred mouth of his.
Kathryn immediately rushed into action, tiptoeing past the corporal’s prone body and opened one of the overhead storage lockers onboard, picking out a large med-kit.
Being a fully trained triage nurse, meant Kathryn had experienced all manner of traumatic scenes like this throughout the Krenaran war, silently she cursed that she had to experience one more.
While Kathryn tended to the grievously wounded Jankov, she asked Kalschacht if he could get a message to the Copernicus, a far higher sense of urgency to her voice now that they had wounded; it was now an emergency.
Sergeant Rachthausen quietly helped her with his fallen number two. She was far too busy with her work to notice him much before, but now she realised that Rachthausen was immense. A big, broad, muscular, burly sergeant, although his blue eyes hinted at a gentleness that his quiet nature confirmed, it was slightly odd to find these traits in an E.D. F trooper, normally they were aggressive, go out there and get the job done types. Rachthausen appeared thoughtful, calm and serene however.
She thought that if the sergeant was a little more aggressive and forthright, he would make an excellent commando. Though the only other commando she had met personally was Nikolai Vargev, and the Russian colonel was the sergeants match in both size and strength, and much more aggressive.
Kathryn bandaged the corporal’s face with ‘synth-flesh’ bandages, and tied a strip of cloth over the man’s ruined eye sockets, other than giving Jankov morphine injections, there wasn’t a lot more she could do for him until she got him back to the ship.
“Shuttle alpha-zero-four to Copernicus, are you receiving, over?”
There was a tense pause, and Kalschacht thought for an instant that the Copernicus had indeed been hit.
“Copernicus to shuttle, are you alright down there, that was one hell of an energy surge.”
“It’s good to hear your voice captain, we’re fine, but we have wounded down here, request permission to return to the ship.”
“Granted, but you’ll have to hold out a little while, until we re-enter orbit.”
“Understood Copernicus, just don’t take up an orbit that puts you anywhere near the structure.”
The communication was suddenly cut-off. “Copernicus….Copernicus, are you receiving? Damn I’ve lost contact with them.”
“Keep trying,” Kathryn said as she continued to tend the wounded Jankov.
“Shuttle to Copernicus, do you read, over?” Kalschacht tried again, “Shuttle alpha-zero-four to Copernicus, are you receiving.” He waited for a response, then with a hint of frustration said, “all I’m getting is static.”
“What the heck is going on up there?” Kathryn asked, her own frustration was beginning to show, she was the mission commander and this whole thing was going to hell and a handbasket.
Unbeknownst to those on the planet, a second craft had detected that gigantic energy release. It bore a striking resemblance to a Solarian cruiser, with its crescent shaped hull, however instead of the gleaming silver of Solarian ships, this was dark, almost completely black except for the faintest of light given off by its portholes. It had a raised command structure, like its Solarian counterpart, though not beak-like, this was swept forward, sharp and angular like a snake darting forward to strike at its prey. Along the outward port and starboard sides of its gently curved hull, were a series of blade like fins.
Right now, just like a snake, it was stalking the Copernicus. Its crew had identified the energy signature from the surge as being one of their own.
One of the aliens aboard, turned toward another sat atop a dark, raised, almost throne like command chair. “Ship is rigged for silent approach, one quarter sub-light speed; their communications are still being jammed.”
“Good; very good.” Drax replied to his subordinate, “close to within weapons range, then load dark matter torpedoes in tubes one and two, fire on my command.”
The Copernicus, still on full alert after that near miss from the energy surge was on-course to re-enter orbit with the planet, it had not detected the dark predator sneaking up behind it.
“See if you can isolate the source of the interference,” Akimbe said to Strandzhar, the captain was delighted his science team was still alive. After a surge of that magnitude, he had feared the worst. However, he was also frustrated that his communication link to the shuttle was rudely cut-off.
Strandzhar worked the controls furiously, “It seems the source of the interference is coming from behind us, captain.”
Akimbe stood instantly, wide eyed with horror, “What!”
The alien ship continued to close, “Steady… steady.” Drax whispered as he stared at the image of the Copernicus getting steadily closer.
“We are within firing range, we have target lock.”
Drax silently allowed a couple more seconds to pass by, to be absolutely certain of the kill.
“Fire!” He shouted; fist clenched.
Twin torpedoes immediately shot forth from launchers secreted either side of its angular command hull, and raced toward their target.
The tiny Copernicus had no time to react, as the two warheads slammed home with horrifying force. One tore its primary sub-light engines to pieces in a violent explosion. Flames and shattered debris were flung far out into space. The second smashed headlong into the starboard side of the vessel, blasting a gigantic fiery hole through the hull of the ship.
Onboard the stricken Copernicus, it was carnage, bodies lay bloodied and burned everywhere. Smoke hung like a thick pall in the air choking those that still lived. Flames licked out from half a dozen smashed consoles on the bridge. Delicate wiring hung limp, with only the occasional spark and crackle to give any clue that power still ran through those severed conduits.
Akimbe struggled, dazed, to his feet, a nasty slash to his forehead that bled profusely down the right side of his face. “Status!” He shouted, half-choking under the intense heat and acrid smoke that filled the bridge.
A young navigation officer, one of the few men left alive managed to make it to an intact computer terminal. “Main engines are destroyed, we have a breach from decks four through eight, fire is spreading through decks five and six!”
“Get to the escape pods, everyone abandon ship!” Akimbe ordered in desperation as he rushed to the only functioning sensory console left intact on his bridge. He had one last duty to perform, and mere seconds to do it in. He quickly performed a computer core dump into a distress beacon, and punched the launch key.
The beacon containing the Copernicus’s computer core records and sensory data shot out from beneath the vessel, and into the inky blackness of deep space.
Akimbe switched the crackling, barely functioning viewer to rear view mode, in order to glimpse his assailant. He could only barely make out its shape against the blackness of space, its dark hull glinted as the light from the Aurigan sun reflected from its numerous surfaces. The monstrosity blotted out the very stars themselves, poised like a great black bat, ready to snuff him out of existence at any moment.
Akimbe sighed, safe in the knowledge that the distress beacon was away, and that the E.D. F would eventually learn of what had transpired here.
That was the last thing Captain Johnatan Akimbe of the Copernicus ever saw.
“Ready laser lances, fire at will, finish that thing!” Drax called out, not hiding the distain in his voice for such an unworthy foe.
The twin wingtip mounted laser lances at either end of the ships main hull, flashed out, bright violet beams instantly blasted the Copernicus apart in an intense fireball. Torn pieces of the ships shattered hull were thrown out in all directions due to the force of the now dissipating explosion. Some of the fragments hurtled through the atmosphere of the planet below, looking like a faint meteor shower blazing across the sky.
A few of those now stranded on the surface spotted the myriad streaks shooting past overhead, witnessing their trails with awe, unaware that they were really witnessing the deaths of their friends and co-workers.
“Contact our other ships nearby; let them know we have found one of the long lost halo worlds,” Drax said with a wide grin.