Eye of the Dracos ec-3

  Eye of the Dracos

  ( E.D.F chronicles - 3 )

  Ian. J. Smethurst

  Ian. J. Smethurst

  Eye of the Dracos

  1. A new dawn

  Lieutenant Commander Kathryn Jacobs stared out from the viewport of the Copernicus; a civilian survey vessel chartered by the E.D. F research division to investigate the Auriga system for potential new colony worlds.

  Auriga was, by and large, an unremarkable system. Situated in the far south west of the Bryant sector, right on the edge of E.O.C. A territory, and about eight light years from the nearest E.D. F facility at Gamma Aurigulon, which happened to be Charlie Echo base, a tiny research facility conducting experiments into a new higher definition space telescope.

  Five years had passed since the great Krenaran war, five long years, hard years, where humanity had toiled and dug itself out of the ashes that were the war-torn outer colonies. It was now 2076, and humanity had set to repairing the damage done during that colossal war admirably. Some of those devastated colonies were now thriving trade and commerce centres, while many others were still being re-built, such was the ferocity of the fighting.

  Like a great many people, Kathryn harboured an intense distrust, bordering on hatred of the Krenaran race for what they had done. For the damage they had inflicted on humanity, and for the scale of wanton slaughter visited upon them. She tried to forget about those times, of the time when she barricaded herself inside the medical bay of Delta base, scared half mad by the horror of what she had witnessed. That was, until a man by the name of Michael Alexander came and rescued her, held his hand out in friendship when many thought her insane. She tried to forget about the evil Krenarans and their empire, however, the scars ran deep.

  Michael was now a decorated war hero, and captain of the E.D.F. S Liberty, Kathryn however, was one of the few that really knew how he felt inside, his pain had almost destroyed him.

  She brushed her long brunette locks, now streaked with the rare hint of an occasional grey strand, she was only twenty three and a fresh faced ensign when Michael had rescued her. Now she was twenty eight, a lieutenant commander, she never forgot that episode and still often thought of him.

  Lieutenant Ayella approached her. “Commander, you are wanted on the bridge.”

  “Understood, lieutenant.”

  She pushed her wayward thoughts to the back of her mind for the time being, duty called.

  Although originally a nurse, Kathryn re-trained shortly after the war. The horrors she faced on the triage table on so many embattled worlds eventually proved too much for her. She did however, discover a love of planetary geology, and so joined the E.D. F research division as a geologist. She never quite understood how this interest manifested itself, suspected it was a kind of defence mechanism as her mind tried to blot out the memory of those soldiers and naval personnel blasted apart by Krenaran weaponry, which she had to patch back up.

  Captain Akimbe was a middle aged man of African descent, a noted geologist himself, although he was mostly known as one of the foremost minds on interstellar phenomena anywhere in E.O.C.A. Kathryn regarded him as a quiet, gentle, thoughtful man, whom she had come to regard highly over the years.

  She strode onto the busy bridge, and took her usual position at one of the myriad science stations dotted liberally around the command centre.

  “We are approaching the Auriga system, captain.” A male voice announced behind her.

  “Understood, drop her out of plasma drive gently ensign, the old girl is not as spritely as she used to be.”

  “Yes, captain.”

  The Copernicus was an old Trojan class frigate, once the mainstay of the E.D. F fleet, before the faster and more advanced Mandela class superseded it. The Trojan class was over twenty years old, and was one of the first frigate sized vessels built by the E.D. F when it had first formed in 2054.

  The Copernicus was the last of these old warhorses still operating, its sister ships long since decommissioned after the Mandela class light cruisers replaced them. The ship was originally named the Achilles during its tenure as a warship, it too was briefly decommissioned.

  However, after spending years floating in a gigantic starship scrapyard in a wilderness area of space between the Levius and Sicarius systems, the Achilles was re-commissioned after the research division put out a petition calling for new science and survey vessels to replace its own ageing fleet.

  The Achilles was stripped of its weapon systems, targeting arrays and military hardware, and was instead packed full of the latest, most powerful sensor suites available. New ultra high definition scanners were installed, and it had a completely re-designed computer system, doubling the amount of data its computers could process. Eventually, after all the work was finished, they re-commissioned the ship the E.D.F. S Copernicus, after the great explorer.

  For the past four years it had served as home for Kathryn, there was an air of quaint nostalgia about the place, as though the ship was like an old friend, a completely different feeling from the ultra modern, high-tech, yet dark and brooding interior of the Liberty.

  The ship shuddered gently; the deckplates began to vibrate and creak as the vessel dropped out of plasma drive, a bright flash lit up its sloped forward section, studded with delicate sensor antennae, its elongated rectangular hull with its giant triangular shaped sensor boom raised above from fifty-metre pylons jutting outward from the aft dorsal section of the ship, and chock full with all manner of sophisticated sensor systems.

  Two giant inter-system booster engines blazed into life, shooting out a trail of super heated gas which slowly began to propel the ship on its long journey further into the Auriga system.

  As the small vessel left the giant swirling plasma wake it had just emerged from, the wake collapsed in on itself in another blindingly bright flash that lit up the silhouette of the vessel once again.

  The first planet it passed was the barren, frozen ice world of Auriga VII, the farthest planet out in the system, a routine scan of the small planetoid had revealed that the surface was far too cold at minus one hundred and fifty seven degrees, and the atmosphere too thin to support human life. It was removed as a suitable candidate for habitation rather quickly.

  The ship passed close to the blue-green noxious soup of the gas giant Auriga V, noting the violent storms constantly whipped up across its surface for further study later.

  They travelled further into the system, towards their ultimate objective Auriga III, the planet was located in this system’s ‘habitable zone.’ Far enough away from the Auriga star so that it would not be too hot, yet close enough that it would not be too cold. Several hours later and the ship reached its destination. Taking up a geo-stationary orbit above the deep beige coloured planet, and began taking detailed scans.

  “ It looks like the rocks on the surface are made up of silicon carbides and molybdenum, scans of the core show an unusually hot molybdenum-tungsten mix. It points toward the planet may have once been very close to the Aurigan star, some kind of spacial incident may have forced its orbit further away.” Kathryn said as she turned towards Akimbe.

  The captain considered this, stroking his grey stubbled chin thoughtfully, “try a full geological scan of the surface, see if we can find any craters, or evidence to explain why the planet was pulled so far out.”

  “Solar flare?” Lieutenant Pryor suggested.

  “Could be, though there would be some scorching on the surface, I’m not picking up anything.” Kathryn replied, “something has pushed it out this far, and the planet has settled into a new orbit.” She studied her screen intently, Kathryn loved little scientific mysteries like these, it allowed her to play detective.

  “The atmosphe
re has a high concentration of carbon dioxide and methane, if we go down there we’ll need environment suits.” Ensign Otis announced, a junior scientist from the opposite side of the oval command centre.

  Kathryn’s screen suddenly blazed into life, almost taking on a life of its own as vast amounts of data and recordings streamed across the display.

  “What, in the blue hell is that!” She said; peering wide eyed in amazement at her screen.

  “Show me,” Akimbe said in excitement, moving as fast as his body would allow.

  Kathryn brought up a high definition scan of what appeared to be a gigantic metallic looking structure, pointing skyward from the planet surface towards them. It closely resembled that of an enormous eye, peering up at the ship. The sight gave Kathryn a cold shudder down her spine; she didn’t know whether it was excitement at this new discovery, or fear.

  “My god,” Akimbe gasped, glancing over Kathryn’s shoulder. “That thing must measure three kilometres wide, any power readings or signs of life down there?”

  Kathryn glanced over the readings again. “Nothing, the whole structure seems to be abandoned. Although whatever it is made of is throwing off my scanners, it appears to be some sort of new metal; it isn’t even on the periodic table. Judging by the level of corrosion, it looks to have been defunct for around three hundred years.”

  “Could be the remains of a dead civilisation,” Akimbe offered.

  “If so, why aren’t there any other buildings or traces of habitation, just this one giant structure.”

  “Maybe they were swept away or buried in some natural disaster?” Akimbe didn’t have any real answers either; he was as befuddled as Kathryn.

  “We’ll have to send a team to investigate, if we are to know for sure.”

  “I agree, prepare a landing shuttle.”

  “Pryor, Gomez, you’re with me,” Kathryn announced as she left the command centre with the two scientists in tow.

  “Kathryn, I don’t have to tell you to be careful down there. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with,” Akimbe said with a warm but ever so slightly concerned smile, just as he sank himself back down into the worn and faded command chair.

  Kathryn returned the smile as she turned back to face the aged captain, touched by his concern for her welfare, “Don’t worry captain, I will.”

  With that, the science team left the bridge and made their way down to the shuttle deck. She picked some other scientists she thought would be useful in the exploration of that strange place. In total, the team was made up of six members, Dieter Kalschacht, the noted German physicist. Mira Romaine, a talented chemist. A fellow geologist by the name of Matthew Broadhurst, Lieutenant James Pryor a specialist in both spacial and planetary meteorology, and finally Pablo Gomez a Mexican trained extensively in xeno-archeology.

  The science team was escorted by a ten man squad of troops from the sixty ninth Sicarian guards infantry division, assigned to the Copernicus to safeguard the scientists onboard when exposed to potentially threatening environments, such as this.

  The sixteen strong group all boarded the long shuttle, vaguely resembling that of a 20th century executive jet. Although in spaceflight mode its wings and tail were retracted safely inside its elongated bullet shaped fuselage.

  Inside, it was cramped, in part due to the press of bodies. Typical E.D. F shuttles normally carried a maximum of ten men, this one was being asked to carry sixteen, and their equipment as well.

  The shuttles powerful solid fuel booster engines roared into life, echoing throughout the empty shuttlebay, its anti-gravity motors gently lifted it clear of the bay floor just as the bay doors opened. With a gigantic roar, the turbofans increased to full power and the tiny craft accelerated out from the rear shuttlebay of the Copernicus and out into the inky blackness of deep space. Leaving the comparatively enormous survey ship far behind, before banking gently and heading for the beige hued planet below.

  Matthew, piloting the shuttle, deftly made some slight course corrections, so that the craft could enter the planets atmosphere at just the right angle. The small vessel quickly began to heat up as it descended through the upper atmosphere of Auriga III, increasing in speed as the planet’s gravity took hold, pulling the small craft closer to the surface.

  The shuttle punched through the roiling carbon dioxide and methane clouds in the atmosphere, and deployed its delta wings and tail for normal atmospheric flight.

  Kathryn ventured a look from the port side viewport next to her seat, as the craft sped toward its destination. She could make out deep rocky windswept valleys, and tall jagged mountains rising up from the surrounding flatlands; though there was very little in the way of habitation, the planet seemed barren, forlorn, bereft of life.

  That was, until the occupants got their first glimpse of the massive, angular structure they had viewed from orbit.

  2. Discoveries

  It was absolutely enormous in size, six massive dull metallic pylons seemed to reach up, high into the sky. Looking like great claws sprouting out from the planet surface. These ‘claws’ surrounded what appeared to be a giant cannon-like aperture in the centre, a massive sinkhole that extended into pitch darkness.

  The shuttle circled the massive dark installation, its sullenness gave Kathryn a second gentle shudder down her spine.

  “My god, that thing must be almost three kilometres in diameter.” Romaine said, awestruck at the sheer scale of the long defunct facility.

  “It looks like nothing we have ever seen before,” Kalschacht added.

  To Kathryn though, the structure looked as bereft as its surroundings, lost in the mists of time. Even here, looking upon it from the safety of the interior of the shuttle, the sight gave her tiny goose bumps. Nevertheless, she had a job to do so she swallowed her fears. “It resembles Solarian architecture with it having a grand, almost organic like form, with lots of flowing curves, instead of our own rugged utilitarian style.”

  “There are some notable differences, however.” Gomez replied, “take a look at the tips of the pylons, they are not curved gently like traditional Solarian designs, instead they appear to be sharp, almost blade-like.”

  “It’s dark as well, the metal is like some sort of non-reflective anthracite, I don’t recall the Solarians ever using a material like that.” Broadhurst pointed out, as he gently manoeuvred the shuttle in for landing, deploying the landing legs as he did so.

  “Either way, we’ll know more when we get inside,” Kathryn added.

  The shuttle gently touched down on a small area of flat ground not far from the edge of the pylons. The occupants all donned their environment suits, clicking their helmets into place and checking the hermetic seals were all secure and not leaking, before disembarking from the shuttle.

  The guards all fanned out, forming a small hemisphere around the site of the shuttle and the scientists. The craft behind them continued gently thrumming, as the turbines of the boosters slowly came to rest.

  The wind had certainly grown stronger, everyone could feel the chill in the air through the outer layers of their suits. It was all Kathryn could do to prevent herself from being blown over. Hearing the howling winds through the glass in her helmet, she ventured a look across Auriga’s mountainous landscape, the planet’s twin moons were approaching their zenith high in the night sky, the double moonlight cast upon the surface made it perfectly bright enough to see.

  She tried to shout into her helmet mic. over the winds that whipped by them all. “We need to look around, see if we can find some sort of entrance into the structure!”

  “Understood,” the other scientists all said in unison.

  The group began to split up into teams of two, and started combing the derelict surface. Gigantic pylons loomed over them, casting some of them into shadow, and reaching up well over two thousand metres into the night sky.

  Kathryn ran her hands over the various panels and indents, carved with such a precision, such an intricate attention to detail, E.D. F
scientists could not better it. The wind that blew through this place gave off an eerie howl as it whistled by the edges of the pylons.

  The ground was perfectly smooth, and even gave off a slight sheen as the moonlight played across it.

  Despite the ferocity of the wind battering against the claw-like pylons, not a single one of them swayed so much as a millimetre. Whatever these were made from, they were immensely strong, and incredibly weather resistant Kathryn thought as she continued to explore. Moving her glove across a portion of one of the pylons, it came back wet. The whole surface of the pylon was damp with condensation, yet there was very little rust or oxidisation. She wondered how the Copernicus’s sensors could have dated the structure to be three centuries old, with such scant evidence. The pylons looked as though they had been built here recently, although that could be mostly due to the exotic materials used in their manufacture. This was getting weirder by the minute she thought as she looked across the base of one; judging it to be easily a hundred metres wide.

  Kathryn abandoned her search and headed toward the massive aperture in the centre, she reached the edge after a moderately short walk. Surprisingly there was no handrail or anything to prevent falling into the black depths, the smooth floor just seemed to stop, and form this perfectly smooth borehole.

  “What do you think is down there?” One of the soldiers asked as he approached her.

  “I’ve no idea,” she replied honestly, as she knelt down to peer over the edge of this massive abyss. “The Copernicus’s sensors couldn’t penetrate much more than a few metres.”

  The wind howled and blew around them again, the soldier helpfully took hold of her, in case she should be blown in.

  “Thanks,” she said as she leaned over to peer into nothing but a dark inky blackness, gasping at the unfathomable depths, the aperture itself looked bottomless.

  “Pass me your torch,” Kathryn asked, still peering.