Opus X: Fleet of One Book 1: Second Contact

They say history repeats itself but in this case that could be the worst thing for humanity.

Opus X: Fleet of One snippet – 

1 – 

April 5, 2233, Gliese 357, Astarte, Ruin Survey Site Alpha Two-Four

A million years was a long time for something to be buried. Human civilization covered the barest blink of that time. Even the other alien civilizations couldn’t claim such deep roots. That million years was now represented by a dusty, empty hallway.

A normal man might not find that beautiful, but Cyrus Sandoval wasn’t a normal man. His breather unit kept his huge grin hidden from the rest of the team as he moved his hand back and forth, lighting the lined and grooved black walls with his wrist flashlight.

“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Cyrus announced, his excitement making him raise his voice despite it being transmitted to the team over the comm. While staring at the wall, he’d forgotten for a second that he was in a pressure suit. “Manually check your suit integrity every once in a while. Never assume it will auto-seal, and just because this place isn’t covered with snow and ice doesn’t mean it’s not as cold as the surface.”

He didn’t want to insult them, but neither of his two assistants had worked an actual site exploration before. Mistakes happened in dangerous environments. He’d seen that more than once during his xenoarchaeology career.

The dust and frost had smoothed out the floor and walls over the years, including the line decorations, but they hadn’t left any doubt about the artificial nature of their current passage. They were in ruins that hadn’t been touched for eons, yet they looked like someone had forgotten to send in the cleaning bots for a few months.

His heart raced, as it did with all new discoveries. They’d dated the ruin entrance via ice core samples to approximately a million years ago. That didn’t speak to the true age of the facility, but it did guarantee it had been buried around then.

Cyrus would have loved to have challenged his xenoarchaeology and xenobiology knowledge by exploring the structures of one of the living intelligent species. Given that humanity had established the most basic of diplomatic contact with the reptilian Zitarks only a couple of years ago and the other Local Neighborhood races were content for humans to stay in their own territory, he doubted he’d get a chance anytime soon.

It didn’t matter. Cyrus was only in his thirties, meaning he still had a long life ahead before he needed to worry even about rejuvenation treatments. A modern human might not be able to live forever, but they could get to a hundred and twenty-five without much trouble. He was sure he’d live long enough to team up with an alien archaeologist and jointly explore an ancient site.

For today, the age of the ice assured him it wasn’t a lost structure of one of the younger races. The design and material suggested as much. The ruins had to belong to the most ancient of races, the long-dead Navigators.

Even though it had been a hundred and seventy-five years since the first discovery of the extinct race’s ancient artifacts on Mars, humans still knew little about them. Navigator technology had allowed humanity to build the hyperspace transfer points and push out into the galaxy, among other wonders, but no living soul could claim with authority what a Navigator looked or sounded like.

The questions swirled in his mind. What language did they use, if any? Were they so advanced they relied on technological telepathy? More importantly, what had happened to them?

Cyrus theorized that a vast galaxy-spanning catastrophe had wiped out the Navigators, but there wasn’t any evidence of that other than their remaining structures all being dated to roughly the same time. Admittedly, the evidence might have disappeared due to the relentless power of time.

He’d also hoped the tumultuous recent years might lead to the revelation of concealed Navigator-related information. He thought it might have been concealed by the people who’d almost brought down the United Terran Confederation in the Great Betrayal two years prior.

The government had admitted the conspiracy had access to unusual technology and previously unknown artifacts, but there’d been nothing to suggest they had any special insight into history. Maybe after everything settled down, previously hidden truths would emerge that would advance xenoarchaeology.

Cyrus tapped a small silver card attached to the belt of his pressure suit—his Personal Network Interface Unit or PNIU, his primary access point and means of communication both in and out of the ruins. An updated status message popped up on his smart lens, his augmented reality interface with the world.

A whir and a hum sounded behind him. Four tiny orb-shaped drones floated into the area. He wanted every last centimeter of the area recorded by a variety of sensors. A team of two assistants trailed him, their PNIUs also recording.

“Dr. Sandoval,” called Jesan, Cyrus’ most recent hire. “Gravity remains at one-point-one gee.”

The gravity in the ruins was consistent with the rest of the planet other than the colony, where gravity field emitters kept things to the more comfortable Earth norm.

Fatigue had built in his muscles. His pressure suit protected him from the environment, but it didn’t take care of any extra weight. He’d wanted to do a preliminary survey before bringing in heavy equipment that risked damaging the ruins.

Cyrus patted the heavy pack behind him. He wasn’t totally relying on his muscles. The carryaid’s internal mechanisms let a normal man carry more weight without relying on an exoskeleton.

“I’m glad we brought these packs, then.” Cyrus grinned. “Trust me. Are you both doing okay? A little extra gravity will tire you out.”

Jesan glared at him. “I’m not worried about carrying things around. I was hoping it’d be a lower-gravity environment for other reasons. I don’t want this whole trip to be a waste. It’s not insane to think a facility this intact might have working grav field emitters.”

“No team has ever found a Navigator facility with working emitters,” Cyrus noted. “Maybe the aliens have found one, but if they did, they’re not saying. I’m guessing they had to experience their first true gravity field manipulation the same way we did, through a lot of reverse-engineering and experimentation. You’re right. You never know what you might find when you enter a ruin. I don’t think anyone thought those initial artifacts and ruins on Mars would lead to FTL travel.”

Cyrus understood Jesan’s frustration. The junior researcher had joined the team, hoping to explore a theory that the Navigators had evolved in an extremely low-gee environment.

Cyrus was intrigued but doubtful. No researcher had ever run across evidence to suggest that.

The junior researcher’s case was based on indirect data suggesting the extinct race was much larger than humans and the other Local Neighborhood races and that a low-gee environment was the best evolutionary exploration. That was a thin thread on which to hang a new line of research.

Cyrus wasn’t going to complain about a man going off on research tangents. That was how humanity advanced its knowledge.

He moved closer to a wall. A smattering of small indentations appeared in various places, distinct from the grooves and lines. It wasn’t anything he’d seen or read about being associated with Navigator ruins before. The depth of the holes varied, with deeper holes near the centers of the clusters.

“Interesting.” Cyrus leaned forward. “Very interesting.”

“Does it always feel this good?” asked Kella, the other new assistant. She cleared her throat. “I mean, finding new things. This is the third set of Navigator ruins you’ve explored, right, Dr. Sandoval? I never thought I’d be one of the first into a new ruin so early in my career.”

“Yes,” Cyrus replied. “It does always feel this good.” He pulled a small sensor probe off his utility belt and ran over it over a nearby wall. “This is my third field site. I’ve helped analyze artifacts from a lot more sites than that, but I’ve led expeditions for two sites, and when I was finishing my doctorates, I was on the team for my first.”

Something was bothering him about the odd holes. He didn’t want to touch too much at this point in the examination. Part of him felt like he should know what they were.

“Doctorates,” grumbled Jesan under his breath, forgetting to kill his PNIU transmission. “Xenoarchaeology and xenobiology. Overkill.”

“You never know what we might find in a site like this,” Cyrus told him with a laugh. “It doesn’t hurt to have more knowledge when exploring ancient mysteries.”

Jesan stiffened and turned away. He slapped his PNIU to kill his open line.

“No,” Cyrus barked. “Keep your transmission line open. People die when they’re fiddling with their PNIU trying to reestablish comm after damage to their pressure suit. We discussed this during your briefing.”

Things like that could become a habit. Bad habits got people killed in the field.

“Sorry, Dr. Sandoval.”

This was what came with working with rookie graduate students. Cyrus didn’t like working with a new team, but the quick turnaround on the site forced him to call on whomever he could gather together on short notice.

Getting anyone from Earth would have taken over half a year, given their distance from Astarte, so he had to pick people closer to the colony. It was only luck that he’d been so close when a wildlife survey stumbled on the ruins and the local government put out a call for experienced xenoarchaeology researchers.

“I was going to be the team lead on another expedition before this,” Cyrus explained, “but that was being planned right when the Great Betrayal happened.” He let out a rueful chuckle. “It wasn’t so bad at first, but a year afterward, it became a pain in the ass. The government was acting like every ship was full of conspirators.”

The United Terran Confederation, the UTC, had been rocked by a massive wave of terrorism that culminated in a coup attempt in 2231, then a near-galactic war. Government reports revealed that the instigators of the conspiracy were some of the most important people and companies in the UTC. Heroic military and law enforcement action, as well as the efforts of the now-famous pair of Erik Blackwell and Jia Lin in exposing the conspiracy, had saved the UTC, but not without great cost in lives and damage to the economy.

Cyrus suspected there was a lot more behind the adventures of the so-called Obsidian Detective and Lady Justice, but he didn’t care. His interest was in the far past, not recent history. He only cared how things affected his research.

He shook his head. “One of the annoying things was that the companies that were controlled by the conspiracy were some of the biggest contributors to scientific funding. The government is obsessed with spending more on building up the Fleet to beat someone they already defeated. Now, we’ve got a trashed economy and a lot less funding for science for the foreseeable future.” He advanced down the hallway. “Which is why this place is that much more of a miracle.”

“What about traps?” Jesan asked. “They always say there can’t be any traps because of how old the tech is, but how can they be sure?”

“I’ve never run into traps.” Cyrus laughed. “But I’d love to.”

“You want to run into traps?” Jesan gave him a puzzled look.

“Working trap tech could be better examined. I love a good puzzle, and I’d also love to know more about the Navigators. Anything of theirs we find will help with that.” Cyrus took a deep breath. “What if their idea of traps is different from what we can imagine? We know the most basic things about their technology, but we have no insight into their psychology. Some people suggest they purposely left ruins for future races to discover. Does that mean they knew they were going to die off? Why did that happen? There are so many unanswered questions.”

“I can’t believe I’m stuck on this frontier ice cube,” Jesan complained, giving no hint that he was moved by Cyrus’ passion. “I knew I’d need to leave Earth at some point, but this place? Doesn’t it bother you, Dr. Sandoval? Wouldn’t you rather be on Earth? I mean, does it matter who finds the site if everybody studies the artifacts anyway? The UTC claims ownership of everything in the end.”

“Earth’s overrated.” Cyrus paused for a moment to tap more commands into his recording drones and made a mental note to watch Jesan. That was not a proper attitude for a xenoarchaeology student who would spend most of his time on “frontier ice cubes.” “I wasn’t born on Earth. I was born on New Samarkand.”

Jesan grimaced. “No wonder you ran away. That was a shitty place even before everything that happened.”

“I liked growing up on the colony,” Cyrus countered, keeping his tone pleasant. “Things weren’t that bad when I lived there, and things are a lot better now. If you think about it, what happened there was a test run for the Great Betrayal, and if New Samarkand’s crappy because of the insurrection, what does that say about Earth and the moon? Or Alpha Centauri? There have been no major assassination attempts of top-level UTC officials on my home colony.”

Jesan groaned. “Sorry, Dr. Sandoval. I knew you weren’t born on Earth. I just forgot.”

Kella scoffed. “You think they’re going to suddenly find new Navigator ruins on Earth? You picked the wrong field to go into if you wanted to stay home.”

“Just saying.” Jesan moved closer to a wall to inspect it. “The stuff was on Mars all that time. Like I said, it’s about analysis, not who finds it.”

“Being the scientist who finds it is half the fun.” Kella smiled.

“True,” Cyrus agreed, “but why couldn’t we find artifacts on Earth? Despite all our technology, it’s not like we’ve mapped every nook and cranny. Maybe there are Navigator ruins buried under the ice in Antarctica or a remote mountain. Just because everything we found from the Navigators dates to a million years ago doesn’t mean they weren’t active far earlier. It might just be a matter of digging deep enough.” He ran his gloved hand over a wall. “The truth is, there is far more we don’t know about the Navigators than we’ve confirmed. That’s what makes this so much fun.”

An alert popped up. He tapped his PNIU to expand it until the floating words appeared in front of him via his smart lens.

“Unusual vibrations detected,” Cyrus announced. “Everyone be careful.”

“Huh?” Jesan turned toward him. “You’re saying there are traps?”

“Nope, but traps aren’t the only thing dangerous on digs. The geo survey suggested this area was stable right now but noted it wasn’t stable in the past. There are other possibilities.”

Kella gasped. “Smugglers?”

“Yeah, they can be a problem.” Cyrus patted his holstered stun pistol. “That’s why it’s good to have a weapon when you’re far from a colony.”

“Will that be enough?” Jesan asked, sounding annoyed.

“Maybe,” Cyrus replied. He pulled a dark knife from its sheath. “This helps, too.” He flipped the knife in the air before shoving it back into its sheath. “The militia’s keeping an eye on this place, too. That should cut down on smugglers.”

“Is that why you have those scars?” Kella asked quietly. “Smuggler attacks? I mean, you can’t see the scars now given your pressure suit, but it was kind of hard not to notice when we first met. No offense, Dr. Sandoval, but I’ve never seen anyone with scars who wasn’t…well, you know.”

“A criminal?” Cyrus asked.

“Yeah.” Kella sighed. “Why haven’t you received dermal regeneration? I mean, when I first saw you with those scars and the red hair and your size?” She let out a nervous chuckle. “You reminded me of an ancient Viking. You just need the beard.”

“Why didn’t I get rid of the scars?” Cyrus reached up to touch his face, but his helmet blocked the gesture. “Because sometimes it’s good to have a reminder about messing up. That’s the problem with it being so easy to fix people these days, which is why we need to be careful.” He narrowed his eyes. “This isn’t seismic activity. I don’t think we’re alone.”

“It’s probably just overly sensitive instruments,” Jesan suggested. “We verified that no one else had broken through the front when we entered these ruins. If the militia’s got their eyes on this place and it’s not smugglers, who could it be?”

Cyrus entered more commands. The drones spread out and scanned the area for density and thermal differentials.

“That is the problem with a lot of Earthers.” Cyrus clucked his tongue. “You take too many things for granted. You’ve only been out on the frontier for a few months, right, Jesan?”

The young man nodded. “Not counting all the time on the damned ships, yeah. What about it? Am I supposed to fall in love with living under domes?”

Cyrus didn’t answer. He focused on a slight thermal difference in the wall detected by one of the drones.

“Don’t you remember how these ruins were discovered?” he finally asked.

“Odd readings during a local wildlife survey,” Jesan recalled with a snort. “If you can call the trash on this planet wildlife.”

“Most planets don’t have any life,” Kella noted. “Every new non-terrestrial species we find is a big deal. How can you not care about that sort of thing?”

Jesan shrugged. “I’m here for the Navigator biology, not the local wildlife. Sorry.”

Cyrus drew his pistol. “These ruins have been here for a million years, but they’re not impervious to damage.” He pointed at a dark spot on a wall. “Tunnels were dug. Smooth, like they were burned through. I think we’ve got local pests nearby.”

“So what?” Jesan laughed. “You’ve got a gun, and we’ve got drones. Some stupid animal isn’t going to—”

A harsh screech echoed around them. Something long and pale wriggled out of a hole in the roof ahead of them. The eyeless wormlike creature dropped to the ground and twisted toward Jesan, glowing a soft yellow.

“That’s disgusting,” Jesan admitted, “but it doesn’t look dangerous.”

The worm opened its mouth and spat a stream of green acid. Cyrus tackled Jesan to the ground. The acid splattered on the nearby wall, sizzling and creating a shallow hole. One mystery solved.

“What the hell?” Jesan yelled as he scrambled to his feet. “It spits acid? You didn’t tell me that!”

The worm whipped its head back and forth, screeched again, and slithered backward. More alerts from the drones popped up. At this point, Cyrus didn’t need the sensors to warn him. The pressure suit picked up the sounds of bodies slithering their way.

Cyrus drew his stun pistol. “Next time, read the briefing I sent you. These things live in colonies. Here comes the fun part!”

The fun part? I’m glad Cyrus thinks so. Stay tuned because these ancient creatures’ significance will be revealed later this week on February 11th when Opus X Fleet of One Book one: Second Contact is released. If you have been waiting for the next installment of Opus X then head over to Amazon and pre-order it today.