Sargasso of Souls – Session 13

A doorway on the opposite wall led deeper into the complex and it appeared that Bell had gone that way, but when Santino opened it, there were no footprints in the corridor on the other side. It would seem that the ‘lab’ was the furthest Bell had been.

We looked around some more and Santino noted that there were finger-marks in the dust on the console that was emitting a faint power signature. He moved his hand over it and felt a slight tingle.

“Perhaps we could use the bio-scanner to work out where he pressed?” Veldin suggested, but Santino didn’t think it was such a good idea.

“We have no idea what that would do” he warned. “I would recommend returning to the entrance hall and trying one of the other doors; unless our objective is to find out what happened to your missing crewman?”

The professor was right; much as I wanted to know what had happened to Bell, our immediate priority was exploring the complex. Even though there were signs that the two were inextricably entwined, we should not be distracted from what we were supposed to be doing there.

At that moment the lights flickered and Bauman registered a slight power dip on his scanner.

“Let’s pull back to the entrance hall”, I said. “There’s no evidence Bell went any further than this”

We returned without incident and, after ensuring everyone was ready, Santino opened the first door on the left. Beyond it was a dark corridor sloping downward. It curved round sharply to the right and then opened out into a flooded cavern. There were no other exits that we could see, but overhead a crystalline bridge spanned from one side to the other. From its position it seemed likely that the bridge was accessible from the second door in the hall above. We went back and tried it. It was.

Across the bridge there appeared to be an alcove and maybe another doorway but we did not cross. Instead we tried the remaining door on the right. It led to another corridor.

Part way along this corridor we found another door. The room, which was off to the right, was cluttered with tools and equipment. There were no power readings there but numerous benches, all made up from the same hexagonal tiles that we saw everywhere, were littered with unknown items. Veldin’s eyes lit up as he wandered amongst the alien treasures.

The next room we came to was further down and on the opposite side of the corridor. It was similar save that one of its walls had partially collapsed, and the containers within it suggested it might once have been a food store.

While we were looking around I saw Veldin pick up a small metallic canister and start to put it in his bag.

“Veldin” I said sharply over the comms.

He hesitated.

“Put it back” I told him sternly.

He looked wistfully at the canister.

“That wasn’t a request Veldin” I threatened.

He sighed and grudgingly put it back.

At the time I didn’t know that it wasn’t the first thing he had picked up.

As we moved on, the corridor turned left. By my calculations we were heading parallel to the corridor to the lab.

The third room we came to was bigger than the others and there were signs that it was there that the Ancients had made their last stand. Scorch marks were burned across the walls and five Ancient corpses lay behind a barricade on the far side of the room. Each of them wore a crystalline forearm guard, which may have been some kind of weapon, and it appeared that they had all died from near perfect head wounds. The precision of each shot was uncanny. They were almost identical. I couldn’t believe they had been inflicted amidst the chaos of a firefight. Something else had happened to them.

Santino observed that there was crystal dust scattered around the bodies, but what it was we could not tell.

“This could have been the most valuable thing they possessed and now it is merely dust scattered to the wind,” Bauman said dramatically.

After that room the corridor turned left again. In all likelihood it was taking us back to the ‘lab’, but before we reached it we found six long bunkrooms with about fifty beds in them.

There were some faint energy readings in the rooms so we took a look around.

While Santino and Phipps were exploring I noticed Bauman gazing at a glowing spot on one of the walls.

“Any idea what that is?” I asked.

“I dunno. I touched it and it started glowing” he replied.

He caught my look of disapproval.

“Don’t worry I know what I’m doing” he said.

“And what makes you think that?” I said sceptically.

“I’m a specialist in my field”

“Since when has this been your field Bauman?” I retorted.

Theorising that simply pressing it again would turn it off, Bauman did so; however to his consternation it only changed it from pale yellow to pale green. Rapidly losing confidence he pressed it again and this time it turned blue.

“Great” I said with some annoyance. “We have no idea what that’s doing, do we?”

Trying to retrieve the situation, Bauman pressed it one more time and it stopped glowing. Then the panel shut down. The energy readings that we had been detecting throughout the room grew silent. A few seconds later the door sprang open.

“What’s happening? Talk to me someone”

Bauman took some more readings with his scanner.

“Maybe it’s drained all the residual power out of the system” he suggested uncertainly. “It could be that opening the door is a fail-safe.”

Then we heard one of the other doors open. The tension was raised a notch. There was growing concern that Bauman’s actions would have some as yet unknown consequence.

“I think we should leave” urged Veldin.

“I just need a little more time to figure this out” Bauman muttered.

An iris valve opened somewhere in the distance.

“OK” I said. “That’s enough. Let’s go”

Bauman and I went first, Phipps and Santino behind us and Pietersen at the rear.

Figuring we were nearly back at the lab, we continued in the same direction we had been heading. Sure enough we soon saw the doorway that we had chosen not to go through. However, the light inside the lab was now much dimmer than before.

Bauman cursed “Schize! I think I may have caused a catastrophic power failure!” he said, suddenly running towards the room.

“Bauman wait!” I called, hustling the others after him.

We barely made it inside before there was a massive burst of static. All our equipment flatlined, and the lights in the room went out. We were plunged into total darkness.

Somewhere behind me Pietersen snapped a glow-stick and restored a degree of illumination. Moments later, my suit indicators lit up and informed me that vital systems were being switched to emergency backup power. I mentally thanked the designer for that one.

However, our position had suddenly become quite precarious… or perhaps it had been all along. It was time to get out of there. Using hand signals, because our comms were also out, I indicated to the others that we were leaving and then led them back to the entrance.

We got outside to the cave without further incident and I took a few minutes to patch into a fibre optic cable and send a text transmission to the Salvation to inform them we would be returning without any comms. With the environment on the surface making everyone twitchy, I had no intention of getting shot for failing to respond to a challenge.

We waited for a confirmation and then headed back to the shuttle.

Almost as soon as we were aboard Ramsay came to find us. It was apparent that something had him pretty rattled. And he hadn’t even been inside the complex.

“F**king hell!” he exclaimed. “This place is haunted!”

He proceeded to give us a detailed description of various unexplained incidents that had occurred while we were away. A door had opened of its own accord while he had been working on his own in a crawl space and then he had got spooked while he was in the cockpit and swore that he had seen a reflection in the glass of an alien humanoid. It had been standing right behind him but when he spun round there had been nothing there. Reviewing the footage from the internal cameras showed nothing.

As a precaution Veldin gave him a once over and expressed his opinion that he had been jacked in too long. However, with everything that had happened, I did not dismiss what he had reported entirely.

As for the exploration team, the evidence from our suits suggested that we had been subjected to an intense burst of electromagnetic energy. Effectively every fuse in them had blown.

Once things had settled down a little I had a word with Bauman. He was not happy about it but he offered an apology for his actions in the complex. It seemed he genuinely regretted what he had done. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and blamed fatigue for his poor judgement. I would rotate him back to Bharat station for some R&R on the next shuttle. I didn’t think we would see a repeat of what had happened.

It had been a long day so after that I went to sleep.

A few hours later security got me up again. Jurgens was kind of mysterious about it but it was obvious they had found something out near the excavation site. I went up to the escarpment and was led to a body curled in a foetal position amongst the rocks. It was Bell.

I immediately sent for Phipps.

It turned out that Bell had been dead for two or three days, though curiously the bio-infection had not been the cause. In fact the extent of its progression suggested that it had only begun eating at the body after death. Instead it was organ failure that had killed him, resulting from the fact that his insides seemed to have been boiled.

Gruesomely his eyes were also missing but Phipps declared that it was more likely that they had been consumed post-mortem by the bio contaminant.