Star Drive: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Space Corps Book 2) by Ian Schwartz

Author:Ian Schwartz [Schwartz, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2022-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

OBSIDIAN

There was no atmosphere, so Corax plunged straight down, bouncing his radar off the surface to stop himself from impacting at thousands of kilometers an hour. When he drew closer, he switched on the powered armor’s lights and swung up toward the horizon. For a moment, he glanced at the night sky—a blazing contrast to the darkness below—and spotted the Cadmus, which was a dim light moving past much brighter stars.

According to his radar, the planet was flat—there were no mountains or craters of any kind. He relayed this information to the crew. Petrova answered that someone might have manufactured the entire planet. Corax issued a call of amazement, wondering how anyone could build a world from scratch. But Blake reminded the crew that he had been a prisoner on the inner surface of a Dyson Sphere which was much larger than this place.

“Show off,” Zia said.

Corax marveled at the rogue world’s contradictions. It was flat, but round; a planet without a sun; nearly as silent and dark as possible, but so much more interesting than most of the planets he had encountered in his short career as a cosmonaut. Like any sphere, if you walked on its surface and continued moving in a straight line, you would finish where you had started. The beginning was also simultaneously the end. This last contradiction was one Corax had gotten used to a long time ago, but logically it was maddening to think about. He had to set it aside.

Whatever becomes familiar disappears, he thought.

Blinking the white membranes around his eyes, he descended to twenty meters above the surface. The two light shafts beaming down from his suit vanished into a dark fog. Suddenly feeling afraid, he flapped his wings, and his suit’s EmDrives pushed him another twenty meters up. He was worried that the surface was made of some kind of nanotechnology—a molecular virus, a gray goo which had devoured the planet long ago and which would gobble up Petrova the moment she set foot there.

“Relax,” she said before adding, “Would you hover five meters above the surface?”

Growling, he complied.

“Please do not put me down yet,” she said. “First I wish to test the surface, you understand.”

The light beams were still vanishing into that fog, even though the radar told him they were five meters from solid ground. Without the radar, he only would have known that they were close thanks to the enormity of the horizon, which seemed ready to swallow them up.

Corax flapped his wings, and the suit responded by hovering. It was nice to get out and exercise like this, but he already felt the strain of carrying both the powered armor and Petrova in 1G.

Petrova was fiddling with something. She lifted an object from one of her pockets—a flashlight—switched it on, and tossed it to the surface. The light swung as it fell. Then it struck the ground and held still.

Corax and Petrova stared. The light continued to shine.

“It seems safe to me,” Petrova said.

The rest of the crew—watching through the cosmonauts’ cameras—agreed.

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