Ocean of Stars: Where the Sun Sails [1]

IX

A chilling mist appeared, until half the jumble of severed trees through which they were now traipsing was obscured. At the same time the terrain grew steep and difficult. The mist slowed their progress further by making everything underfoot treacherously slippery.

Lopé didn't like it one bit. Always thinking defensively, he hadn't liked the dense forest, and he liked it even less now that much of it was obscured by fog.

A sound pinged in the mist. It came not from the throat of some unique alien life-form, but from Walter's multiunit. The synthetic frowned at the readout. An anxious Lopé prodded him.

"Something in front of us?"

"No." Standing close to Walter, Aspen was studying the same readout. "Not in front of us. Stop."

The sergeant gestured for his troops to halt. The intermittent breeze stirred the damp atmospheric soup, teasing them now and then with an occasional glimpse of boulders, fallen trees, mountainside. Rosenthal took a step into a puddle of water and immediately froze, fearful she might have disturbed something.

"Not in front of us," Aspen repeated. She had her head tilted sharply back. "Above us."

Shrouded by the mist, they hadn't been able to see it until they were virtually beneath it. Or at least, an awed Lopé thought as he stared upward, beneath part of it. The two gigantic, asymmetrical arms protruded skyward at an angle, as if reaching for something unseen.

They weren't trees, Aspen told herself. They were part of an artificial construct, gigantic and unfamiliar. But what?

They resumed their advance, everyone occasionally glancing up at the looming, curving sweep of the twin protrusions. They hadn't gone much further when they found their path blocked by something smooth, striated, almost polished. Tilting back her head again, Aspen found she could not see the top of it. An enormous wall? But if so why here, slapped up against a mountainside?

Coming up alongside her, Walter ran a hand along the facade. Ripples the same color as the main surface indicated the presence of numerous conduits. So tightly integrated were they into the structure that they looked as if they might have grown from it. Or into it. Experimentally, he rapped one with his knuckles, then turned to look back the way they had come.

The arms, the wall, lay in a direct line with the chasm of smashed trees. The crushed growths nearest to the expedition party had been cut off nearly level with the ground. The artificiality of the wall-object combined with the angle of destruction led him to render a preliminary opinion.

"I would say, based on a number of factors, that we have found some kind of vehicle. A ship."

Lopé grunted. "Thats a big effing ship, if it is one." He mimicked the synthetic's voice. "I would say, based on a number of factors, that it... didn't have a very good landing."

Nearby, Rosenthal started to laugh. It died quickly, smothered by mist and the implications of their find.

As they stood and stared, the fog thinned just enough to see the entirety of one long arm curving overhead. It jutted off the side of the mountain at a sharp angle. The "wall" Aspen had encountered was part of the hull. Much of the vessel—as everyone was starting to think of the artifact—had buried itself in the side of the peak. That, as much as the avenue of downed trees, spoke to the impact with which it had struck.

So overwhelmed was everyone by the discovery that all were startled when Private Cole's voice sounded sharply over the unified comm.

"Think we found a way in, sir."

* * *

The opening into the ship, if that was indeed what it was, loomed vast, dark, uninviting, and unsettlingly reminiscent of a portion of human female anatomy. The team's lights probed the gray-black corridor, groping for something solid off which to reflect.