“Something’s happening on the surface, sir. I don’t know what, but my sensors just went crazy.”
The captain made his way over to look at Strandzhar’s findings to judge for himself. “Hmmm…It looks like it is coming from the alien structure, a massive energy surge, it’s already off the scale and it seems to be increasing even further, Jesus Christ!”
Akimbe tried to make some sense of what he was reading, “what in god’s name can generate that kind of power? Any chance we can find out what type of energy source it is?”
“Negative, sir. Our sensors still can’t penetrate the exterior.”
Akimbe berated himself for his oversight, he already knew this; then wide eyed with shock asked, “the science team?”
“There’s no way to tell.”
Akimbe had only one option open to him as he raced back to his command seat, “full alert status, break orbit.” He had to assume the science team was dead, nothing could withstand an energy surge of that magnitude, not even his ship.
The bridge of the Copernicus took on a darkened tone, a ruddy glow played across the various consoles and surfaces as the ship went to red alert, panicked officers hurried to their positions all over the ship.
Just as the Copernicus was powering up its mighty engines to break orbit, a colossal incandescent beam of raw orange energy, shot out from the enormous aperture in the centre of the structure. Blindingly bright, like a ray of pure fire. The strength of the beam instantly atomised the methane clouds in its path, and raced through the planets atmosphere with all the fury of a rail-cannon shell. Within milliseconds, it had shot through the upper atmosphere and straight past the Copernicus; coating the ship in an intensely bright orange glow as it careered past it and hurtled out into deep space, before shutting down again.
It had missed vaporising the tiny survey vessel by a matter of feet.
“What in the name of god was that!” Akimbe shouted over the warning sirens, and wailing of the red alert klaxon.
“ A beam of pure energy captain, of what type, I have no idea,” Strandzhar replied.
“Is the alien structure still intact?”
“From what I can tell, yes sir. It seems as though the entire facility was designed to emit a beam of that magnitude.”
“A weapon?”
“If it is, it would be a clumsy one. It could only fire in a single direction, and only then at a stationary target.”
“True, but if that beam did hit, nothing would be able to withstand a direct hit from that kind of power.”
Kathryn and the rest of the panicked scientists were desperately trying to find some way to shut down the facility, to prevent a repeat of what had just happened. So far, they could find nothing they could understand.
The loud thrumming had diminished into a low barely audible groan, the station was definitely awake now, and it had awoken with an almighty scream too.
“Guys, come take a look at this,” she heard Gomez say from across the room, she and Kalschacht came over to join him.
“What is it?”
Gomez pointed toward a display, now fully lit, it was showing power readouts throughout the base, it also showed a three dimensional cross section of the entire facility.
“My god,” Kalschacht exclaimed in wonder, “the place is like a huge underground city, we haven’t even explored half of it.” He peered in closer, studying the three dimensional map in more detail, “If I’m looking at this right, the whole facility is built over a massive geo-thermal vent.”
“That would explain the temperature rises,” Kathryn cut in.
“The thrumming noise is a giant rotating collider, collecting the energy and exciting it, thereby turning the immense heat and pressure underneath into massive amounts of raw energy.”
He stepped back a moment, stoking his chin in contemplation, “This whole facility is nothing more than a super advanced, geo-thermal power station. Kathryn have you any idea of the amount of power a facility of this size can produce?”
Kathryn nodded blankly, “rather a lot, I guess.”
“Rather a lot is the under-statement of the decade, this facility can generate virtually unlimited power. If we can find a way to replicate this technology, we would have virtually solved E.O.C. A’s power needs overnight.”
He turned back to the display, “it must have some kind of collector somewhere, a means of storing the energy it produces.”
The physicist touched the display in an effort to find a control to zoom out of the facility, he quickly found that he could manipulate the representation by touch alone. Gradually managing to pan out, at first he could not see anything, then continued panning out further and further until he had zoomed out all the way to the upper atmosphere of the planet itself.
There it was, in orbit. What appeared to be a large collector, faintly resembling a mushroom, its under-surface was wide, in order to collect as much energy as possible from the beam that shot toward it, and was full of small energy cells, all of which must transfer the accumulated energy to a storage facility in the centre of the mechanised ‘mushroom’.
“This is showing that there is a collector,” Kathryn said, stating the obvious, “but our scans did not detect anything in the atmosphere when we entered orbit.”
“It’s showing there was a collector,” Gomez corrected for her, “don’t forget, the data is three hundred years old.”
“And no doubt in that time, the orbit of the collector would have decayed and burned up in the atmosphere long ago,” Kalschacht replied.
“But the facility still believes it is there; so is transferring its energy to it, as it would normally,” Broadhurst added.
“So what would happen to the beam of energy, now that the collector has burned up?” Kathryn asked, fearing the answer to her question.
“It would simply continue on its journey through space,” Kalschacht answered.
“Possibly hitting the Copernicus in the process?” It was the answer Kathryn had most feared. The realisation of the enormity of what had just happened hit all of them. “We need to get a message to the ship, see if they are okay up there.”
Kalschacht warned, “if a beam of that power has hit the Copernicus, the entire ship would be atomised within a split second, nothing could withstand it.”
The entire team exited the small control room and hurried back out onto the adjoining corridor, hurrying towards the elevator, it was easier going now as the lights were now fully lit, they could all see in front of them without having to resort to flashlights. Even though all the ceiling lights emitted was a soft, eerie, almost twilight like glow.
“Perhaps the inhabitants are sensitive to light,” Gomez offered as though reading Kathryn’s thoughts.
“Could be,” she replied breathily as she hurried.
They quickly made it to the end of the floor, and strangely enough, the elevator appeared right in front of them, fully operational. Inside there were several strange buttons within a panel near to the door. It consisted of a button for each floor, written in a form of roman numerals, although sharper as though each number was a weapon, like a dagger. There was a separate symbol, this was completely alien, none of them could understand it.
Using a process of elimination, they found that this symbol represented the surface, and so they pressed it.
The small elevator whipped them up to the surface at a speed of several hundred miles per hour, yet the occupants felt nothing, just the gentle sensation of the device picking up speed as it left off, together with a gentle deceleration as they closed with the main hatch itself.
They had to climb the few remaining steps to the entrance, and once back out to the howling winds of the surface, it was a struggle to stay on their feet.
Kathryn gingerly touched her wrist comm. as a powerful gust of wind buffeted her. “Jacobs to Copernicus, are you receiving?”
There was no answer.
“We’ll need to get to the shuttle and perform a scan to see if she is still in orbit!” Pryor suggested, shouting over the noise of the intense howling winds.