Seventy Hours on Raener-12 : Part 7

The distance ahead was industrial and in the even darkness every wall winked a glossy sheen. My headlamp streaked the room and made the continuing corridor glimmer. The space ahead was soon dancing with our waving searchlights, mere matches in that opaque corridor.

The last man entered: the door shut behind him.

I remember the ungodly click of that door. I tightened my grip on my rifle.

Seconds droned, and instantly after The Mastery came alive. Panels glowed, the ceiling blinked, aqua floor strips ignited down the shaft ahead not unlike trails of gasoline ablaze. Watery blue lights flickered randomly.

Power. The crashed ship had power.

I immediately checked my HUD and recalibrated it to the new signals of the ship’s interior. Our suits and helmets had sensors to detect changes in set frequencies of temperature, electrical fields, and radiation. The top left of my display: magnetic readings–normal. Oxygen remained stable, life-giving. Temperature was low, nearly freezing.

“Status, sir?” Logan asked. I heard his anxious overtone.

“All fields near standards levels. Low temperature and many fluctuating electrical grids. Lights stay on. Pair up. Report any movement, weaponry, or anomalies.” My hands gestured forward, and my team was in motion.

The ship angled downward into a nosedive submerged in Raener-12’s frozen soil. Everything was skewed at the ship’s odd angle. I tread lightly on the steps, descending slanted staircases and walking sideways along ramps.

After an alarmingly quiet march, the corridor opened wider and became a mouth guffawing to a wide and high foyer. The feeling of stepping from that hall was so beautiful and ominous. All my mind saw was an obstacle. We cold deal with obstacles. Even stronger I saw what it truly was–the only way ahead.

In contrast to the grated, constricted way we had emerged from, the ovular room was a stark opposite: foreign and welcoming. Slabs of tile lined the floor, each emitting a tiny blue light from beneath. They glowed in the dark, curved in spiraling geometric patterns around a center console. It was clear that the room must have been a brigade hall, a colossal council room for the staff of the ship. I angled my beam high above our heads. A rotunda of glass bowed into a mighty bubble: a giant observation hole to space, but then only to a white wall that had toppled through the glass through a jarring crack. On the ground beneath we stepped around shattered fragments.

My crew continued eagerly through that deserted sloping hall. Six miserable men crossed that mighty and massive space, unsure as all Hell what the ship was or what lay ahead, ready for a respite.