The Alpha Species by WW Mortensen

Author:WW Mortensen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: WW Mortensen
Published: 2021-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

31

Mbye nodded. “Thrilling, isn’t it?”

Owen baulked. Thrilling, yes—infinitely so—but also perplexing, too. Before, Mbye had said the gateway had collapsed, that the Vent was closed…

Apparently sensing his confusion, Mbye explained, “We’ve engaged the anomaly several times. Six, to be exact.”

“That can’t be right,” Jessy said with breathless wonder. “That’s impossible.”

Overwhelmed, his emotions swirling, Owen watched as the rover ploughed ahead, bumping over uneven ground, the vision on screen lurching fuzzily from rotting leaf litter to feathery underbrush and back again. Jessy was right. How the hell had they pulled this off? That they’d opened the Vent six times clearly suggested they were closing it, too, likely as a risk mitigation. But still…

On screen, the image distorted again.

“It gets clearer,” Mbye assured them. “Of course, a UAV would be preferable, but the drones need to be tethered and grounded. Unfortunately, this also limits their range. Okay, here, it is.”

The rover entered a clearing and halted. The image stabilised, and rotors whirred as the camera focused and then panned slowly from left to right. Low-lying ferns and broad-leafed shrubs dominated, but there were bladelike buttress roots, too, snaking from the shadows in all directions. Here, the forest floor was dark, almost swampy, and out of this murk rose gnarled, twisted trees draped in vine-like lianas and woody, parasitic growths. The jungle was gloomy and oppressive. Claustrophobic.

Watching that vision, Owen felt a stab of unease.

“So, this place… what we’re seeing… this is where the megs came from,” Jessy clarified. “And the spheres, too.”

“The megs, yes, but not necessarily the spheres,” Perez said. “The system was damaged, remember? The gateway could have opened to a random place, totally unrelated to the spheres. Either way, it’s locked onto this location.”

Owen’s skin rippled in gooseflesh. Unrelated, random, it didn’t matter. Whatever—wherever—the hell this was, be it another planet or dimension or something else altogether, it was nothing short of mind-blowing. Next level mind-blowing. “Goddamn,” he said. “The megarachnid homeworld…”

Jessy squeezed his knee, a non-verbal confirmation that she, too, was equally stunned and inspired. “It’s just like here, isn’t it? The vegetation… it’s the same. Just like Earth. I’m guessing the stratosphere must be similar as well… and the temperature, maybe a little warmer, but most likely steady.”

Perez nodded. “Data confirms the surface temperature is conducive to liquid water. Rivers, at least, but likely oceans and lakes. If it’s a planet, logic suggests it’s positioned such that its sun doesn’t evaporate the oceans or bombard it with too much radiation.”

“The famous Goldilocks zone,” Jessy said. “Not too hot, not too cold.”

“We can go a step further,” Mbye said. “Preliminary analysis suggests the chemical composition of the atmosphere is similar, but oxygen levels are higher. This is supported by the kinds of invertebrates we’ve seen.”

“Kinds of invertebrates?”

Owen caught it, too, and shot a glance at Mbye. “You mean the megs, of course.”

Mbye jutted her chin at the monitor. “Keep watching.”

On screen, the image shifted as the rover started forward again, repositioning itself at the clearing’s far edge. Here,

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