Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [23]
It was an eerie feeling to be all alone on a whole planet. Davlin smiled as the dry breezes brushed his face. He had arrived in the local morning, so he had a full day to image the termite-mound buildings, the iron-hard organic structures left by the Klikiss. This world had strange trees draped with featherlike fronds, surrounded by plants with long spiky leaves like pincushions.
Wandering around the crumbling ruins, Davlin planted sensors and meteorological recorders. He measured the amount of groundwater and estimated the average rainfall. Eventually, if this world was chosen for full-scale Hansa colonization, explorers would bring self-launching satellites to allow faster and more comprehensive mapping of the landforms and weather patterns. For now, Davlin only needed to make the first broad-strokes report.
When darkness fell, he set up his imagers and recorded a full-scan astronomical survey, acquiring spectra of the brightest stars in the local sky. Once he returned through the portal, Hansa astronomers and navigators would read the positions of primary stars, then backtrack and interpolate the location of this planet in order to match it to the coordinate tiles based on Klikiss symbology.
Davlin could have returned to base then, but he was enjoying the reverberant silence. He had never been enamored with the bustle and excitement of civilization. Even the Hansa station at Rheindic Co, which now served as a central point for eager researchers, seemed too crowded to him, too busy. He longed for peaceful days, remembering the quietly productive years when he’d impersonated a simple colonist on Crenna.
He got out a warm sleep sheet, a thin film to wrap around himself that inflated into a cushioned bed. He spent a peaceful, solitary night there on the empty world. At daybreak, he packed up all his instruments, returned to the trapezoidal stone wall, activated the transportal, and stepped through to Rheindic Co…
Back inside the control room, he was immediately struck by an air of oppressive somberness. His dark brown eyes scanned expressions on faces around him, then noted that another of the numerous coordinate tiles had been marked in black. “Who did we lose?”
The technician looked at him, answering automatically. “Jenna Refo. Three days overdue.”
Davlin blew out a long sigh, and the breath of air felt cold. That made five so far—five transportal explorers like himself who had chosen random Klikiss coordinates, hoping to find viable colonization options on resource-filled planets that would mean huge profits for the Hansa.
But sometimes the coordinates were bad. Perhaps the transportal on the other end had been destroyed by an earthquake or other natural disaster…or perhaps the planets themselves were violently inhospitable.
“Damn.” The Hansa paid enough to make the risks worthwhile to some, yet each time an explorer stepped through to an unknown place, it was a gamble. Usually Davlin came back from a successful mission to cheers, congratulations, parties, and toasts. This time, though, he simply submitted his report, then went off to shower.
The following day, a salty old explorer named Hud Steinman returned crowing with delight, oblivious to the still-reticent expressions on the faces of the technical crew.
“I expect a bonus for this!” He twirled a victorious finger in the air. “These coordinates”—he gestured behind him to one of the strangely marked tiles—“take us right back to where it all began, or ended, depending on the real story. I’ve found the transportal tile for Corribus.”
The technicians gasped; a few even applauded. Davlin nodded in appreciation.
Corribus, where Margaret and Louis Colicos had deciphered the plans for the Klikiss Torch, was an empty and scarred world that might have been the last stand of the Klikiss race against the enemy that had obliterated them. For anyone who studied xeno-archaeology, Corribus was the Rosetta Stone, a place etched deep with messages from the past. Also, in a practical sense, such a confirmed datapoint would help the Hansa explorers connect different paths