~*~
Two hours later, the planet below filled the main screen of the Brane Child with white and blue haze.
"That's an unusual amount of cloud cover, isn't it?" Doc said.
Lisa nodded. "Sandra, what are the sensors telling us?"
"Well, the cloud composition appears normal enough. They're mostly just normal water vapor. But I don't know why they're covering most of the planet. Cloud cover should be around seventy percent, on Earth anyway, but here it's closer to ninety."
"What about below them? What can you tell us about the planet's surface?"
"The readings keep shifting. The diagnostics tell me the sensors are functioning properly, but the readings don't make sense. I can't get any distinct coastlines or much of anything else. I thought I detected a mountain range a little while ago on radar, but when I tried to get some better resolution, it wasn't there anymore."
"That's odd," Brax said.
"That's beyond odd. That's impossible," Lisa said. "Mountains don't normally just disappear. Any sign of seismic activity that might explain it?"
"None," Sandra said. "But I'm not sure I trust what these readings are telling me."
"It's time to go down for a closer look then, right?" Brax said, sounding far more enthused about the prospect than Lisa felt.
"Still looking for adventure?" Sandra said.
"Nope. Found it. And a mystery to solve. What do you say, Commander?"
"Maybe," she said.
She still felt hesitant. There must be a safer way to get better data than physically taking the ship down into the atmosphere.
"What about radio transmissions, Sandra? Are you picking up anything like that yet?"
"No, still nothing."
"Are there power readings of any sort?"
"Nothing I can detect."
Lisa found this both confusing and encouraging.
"I suppose that means that if there is someone down there, they probably won't be able to shoot us down, at least."
"So it's a go?" Brax said, leaning forward in his seat.
"There doesn't seem to be anywhere else to go," she admitted with reluctance. "Yes, take us down. Sandra, stay on top of those sensors. Look for signs of human activity—roads, bridges, things like that."
The communications officer nodded. "I recommend we have Sims monitor the sensors as well, Commander. It can analyze the data much faster than a human can."
"Good idea. Sims, tie into the external sensors. Notify us verbally of anything that may be an artificial construction."
"At what confidence level, Commander?" the AI said.
"What? I don't know." She picked a random number that seemed reasonable. "Seventy-five percent."
"Acknowledged."
"We're going in," Brax said. "Slowing for reentry. Make sure your straps are tight. This might get bumpy."
A disturbing thought suddenly occurred to Lisa. None of the old ship's atmospheric flight or landing components had been upgraded. The test plan had not called for a planetary landing, so the corporation had not spent the time or money to overhaul those systems. Their condition had suddenly become important, and it concerned her.
"Sims, what was this ship's last assignment before it was repurposed for the Brane Skip project?"
The disembodied voice of the AI responded instantly. "For the previous twenty-four years it was used to shuttle supplies from Feynman Station to nearby space observatories and other manned platforms."
"So it hasn't landed on a planet for twenty-four years?"
"Forty-four years, Commander. For the twenty years previous to that assignment, this ship carried cargo to and from stations orbiting Earth and its moon."
"Damn!"
"It did, however, make one thousand, two hundred and eighteen landings on either Earth or its moon in the forty years prior to that. During that time, it was supporting the construction of lunar space elevators and ground bases."
Lisa added the numbers and didn't like the result.
"Previous to that—"
"Never mind, Sims." She got the gist of it. The ship was an antique, and the landing systems hadn't been used, and quite possibly not serviced, for decades. Brax did say the old cargo carriers were reliable. She hoped he was right.
"We're at twelve thousand meters," Brax said. "Things will get hot in a second. Nothing to worry about. Brunos are tough ships."
The main screen turned a bright orange as the air around the ship turned to electrically charged plasma. Lisa had ridden into atmosphere before, but never on a ship this old. Her fingers left indentations in the foam padding of her seat's armrests and sweat beaded on her forehead. This had nothing to do with the temperature on the bridge, which remained unchanged, although she could hear the environmental systems straining to keep it that way. She braced herself in her seat, expecting turbulence, but despite the hell outside, the ride remained surprisingly smooth.
"We're through," Brax said. "I'm going to do a few high altitude spirals to shed speed. After that, we can go wherever you want."
"Back to the station would be nice," Sandra said. "But I don't suppose that's an option."
"Still nothing on the sensors, I take it?" Lisa said.
"The readings keep changing."
Which meant they still had no real data about the planet. Lisa saw no alternative.
"Brax, take us below the clouds as soon as you can do it safely. At least then we should be able to see something with the cameras."
"We could do it safely now, Commander, as long as you don't want to land right away."
"Since we don't know where we're going, that's not a problem."
Brax grinned and tapped one of the controls. "Reducing altitude."
A minute later, they broke through the clouds.
"Sims, show us what we're flying over."
The screen switched from showing clouds and gray skies to images of forests and rivers whizzing by at twice the speed of sound.
"Sensor readings are stabilizing now," Sandra said. "I don't have a clue what it might be, but there must be something in the clouds that mucks them up."
"Are you picking up anything interesting?"
"Hang on. Now that's strange."
"What?"
"I may have been wrong about the sensors. Their range seems to be, well, degraded. But I don't know why. I can only get clear readings for about a hundred kilometers around us. Anything farther away than that is still garbled. Within the range that we seem to have, I don't see anything that would indicate human habitation."
"That's going to make it take a lot longer to survey the place," Brax said.
He was right. Without long-range sensors, a full planetary survey was out of the question, but perhaps they could improve their odds of finding people, if any lived here.
"Sandra, see what you can do about the sensors," Lisa said. "Brax, the next time we come across a reasonably large river or coastline, follow it. That's where people tend to build towns."
"Got it. Dropping to subsonic."
The scene below them slowed enough to be able make out individual landmarks, which were limited to trees, hills, low mountains, and more trees.
"Notice," the voice of the AI announced. "Unidentified aircraft are converging on our current flight path."
"Aircraft? Where? On screen, Sims."
The image on the main view screen shifted again. Something appeared ahead, but from this distance, it looked like just a few dots floating in the gray sky.
"Increase magnification," Lisa ordered.
The AI complied, and the commander's jaw fell.
"Those can't be…"
"Dragons!" Brax said. "There are dragons here!"
Three creatures wheeled in the sky ahead of them, and they looked very much like dragons out of a fantasy movie—scaly red ones with long sinuous necks, beating their leathery wings slowly as they rode the air currents. Each was as large as an old-fashioned tractor-trailer truck.
"Here comes another on
e," Sandra said. "Approaching from two o'clock dead ahead."
The image of the last beast appeared on the screen much closer than the others of its kind. It obviously noticed them and apparently did not like what it saw. Its head turned with obvious malicious intent, and it vomited a cone of flame on the side of the ship as it flew past. Lisa flinched as fire splashed across the screen display.
"I don't think its breath weapon can hurt us, but I'd rather not crash into one of them." Brax said. "Initiating evasive maneuvers."
He smiled and banked the ship sharply up and to the left of the three still ahead. "This would be a lot more fun with phasers and photon torpedoes."
"What?"
"Sorry. I slipped into game mode there for a second."
Lisa exhaled a sigh of exasperation. "Just get us away from them."
"Can do. We've got speed on them."
"It looks like they've turned to follow us," Sandra said, staring intently at her sensor console. "But they're falling behind."
The screen shifted to a rear view and Lisa watched as the flying fire-breathers receded into the distance.
"Those cannot possibly have been dragons," she said.
"They looked like dragons," Brax countered.
"They must have been an illusion, maybe some kind of hologram. They're too big, and the design is all wrong. Something like that could not possibly fly, and I'm not even going to mention the fire-breathing thing."
"I agree, Commander," said Doc. "The apparent muscle mass in their wings shouldn't be sufficient for one to take off. I don't see how something like that could evolve naturally. They should not exist." He paused in thought. "But we have seen them. It is most peculiar."
"Lower gravity? Thicker atmosphere?" Brax said.
"All Earth normal," Sandra replied after examining the readings from her sensor station.
"Okay. We'll mark it down as an anomaly for now," Lisa said. "Perhaps their physiology is vastly different from anything we're familiar with. Let's keep looking for something less aggressive that we might be able to talk to. If this place has intelligent life, we may be able to get some answers."
They flew westward until they crossed the terminator into night. More of the same kind of landscape passed below them. The image on the view screen now came primarily from the ship's infrared cameras.
"There's a river ahead," Brax said. "Do you want to go upstream or downstream?"
Lisa debated what seemed to be a heads or tails question for a moment before deciding.
"Let's try downstream. Maybe it will take us to the coast."
The ship banked left.
Dark hills and thick forests passed below them on both sides of the river. Infrared images showed animal life down there but nothing clearly intelligent, or at least not an intelligence that built things they could easily notice.
"Still no roads or anything that looks like cultivated fields," Sandra said. "I'm beginning to think no one is home."
Lisa was starting to suspect she was right, when Sims suddenly provided a new data point.
"There is a heat source ninety kilometers ahead," the ship's AI announced.
"Of course, I could be wrong," Sandra said.
"Perhaps it's a forest fire," Doc speculated.
"Reduce speed, Brax," Lisa said. "Let's see what's going on there. At least it's something to aim for."
Minutes later, the light from several fires on the eastern side of the river became visible on the main screen. And something else.
"Those are buildings," Doc said. "And a lot of them are on fire."
"I'm turning on the forward spotlights," Brax said. "Let's see what we've found."
Lisa was not certain this was a good idea because it would make them more visible to whoever—or whatever—lived in those buildings. Before she could tell him not to do it, a cone of white light played across the scene beneath them.
Figures scurried between tightly packed buildings that looked like they could have come out of Dickens novel.
"It's a city!" Sandra said.
"No, it's more like the suburbs," Brax said. He redirected their lights past the confusing scene whizzing below them to a much larger structure still ahead. Stone walls stood the height of at least five men.
"That's the city."
Indistinct figures fired bows and catapults between the wall's crenellations at the equally indistinct figures torching the outlying buildings.
"And it's under attack."
"Not a good place for us to be, then," Sandra said. "Why don't we see if we can find a nice quiet place on the coast with some good sea food or something?"
"There could be people hurt down there," Doc said. "We should help them."
Lisa sympathized with both Doc's feelings and the imagined victims of the fighting below, but she could not risk her ship and her crew. She was responsible for them.
"Which side?" she asked rhetorically. "This isn't our concern. We're just here to observe, and I'm not taking us down into the middle of a battle."
"I think I can do something about that," Brax said.
"No! I don't want us to get involved in this."
"Look," Brax said. "We're going to have to land somewhere eventually anyway, and this is the only semblance of civilization we've found so far. If we want to find out more about this planet, talking to these people would be a good place to start. They should be able to tell us something. Besides, I think I can stop the fighting down there, and that's a good thing all by itself, right?"
She wasn't sure what he had in mind, but he did make valid points. The people—or whatever—down there were obviously intelligent, and if they could communicate with them, they could learn far more than flying about randomly with dodgy sensors.
"All right," Lisa said. If the weaponry of those below was limited to arrows, the ship should be safe enough. "But be careful. You will not do anything that might risk the ship, understand? This isn't one of your adventure games."
"No problem, Commander. I've got this."
Brax maneuvered the ship closer to the walled city and flew circles around it at barely four times the height of the city walls, slowing to a relative speed of just over three hundred kilometers per hour by the time they made their third lap.
"That should have gotten their attention," Brax said. "Now for the light show."
He activated all of the belly lights, which were commonly only used for landing on unimproved surfaces such as lunar construction sites. The brilliant white light they emitted had an immediate effect on the city's attackers. Some stumbled and fell. Others fled toward the woods. A few of the braver, or possibly stupider, ones shaded their eyes and looked up. Sims automatically zoomed in the view screen on one of their faces.
Ugly would be too kind a word for it. The creature had the general shape and size of a man, but no man had ever looked like this. Beady eyes squinted in a fleshy face covered in greenish skin, which clashed with the unhealthy pinkish color of its pig-like snout and ears. Bluish slime dribbled from its open mouth, filled with jagged teeth. Lisa could almost smell the halitosis in her mind.
The rate of fire from the city walls increased, and the creature they were looking at fell with a shaft through its throat. Lisa cringed at the brutal sight, barely suppressing the scream that tried to escape from her mouth. Intentional violence in her world was almost entirely restricted to fiction, which provided a kind of mental buffer absent to her in this case.
"Just one more trick," Brax said.
He fired the vertical takeoff and landing thrusters and slowed their speed even more. The ship shuddered. Lisa felt more than heard the powerful rockets attempting to counter the effects of gravity on the heavy cargo ship.
"The rest of them are running!" Brax said. He pumped his fist in the air and voiced a victory whoop, which ended abruptly because of an even louder noise.
Sudden explosions like invisible fireworks came from beneath them. The ship lurched in response to each pop. Multiple warning lights flashed a
t the pilot's station and elsewhere around the bridge.
"Oh-oh," Brax said. "Hang on. We're going down."
~Chapter 4~