The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(47)

“There it is,” Marce agreed. The Bransid was illuminating only a tiny area of Dalasysla’s hull. The primary habitat structure stretched on for klicks, a long cylinder that used to be filled with humans and all of their lives. Beyond Dalasysla, blocked by the structure, the giant planet of Dalasysla Prime lurked, roughly the size of Neptune back in humanity’s home system.

“It’s amazing it’s actually still here,” Captain Laure said.

“It was in a stable orbit when the Flow stream collapsed,” Marce said.

“That was eight hundred years ago. That’s a long time for any nonnatural object’s orbit to stay stable. The other moons might have perturbed it gravitationally. A passing comet could have done the same. An impact from a meteor or outgassing from damage might have nudged it. Probably did nudge it, since Klupper here”—Laure acknowledged one of her bridge crew— “tells me that in fact Dalasysla isn’t in a stable orbit anymore. It’s beginning to spiral into the planet.”

Marce frowned. “Is that going to affect us?”

“Not unless we’re here in about a hundred years,” Laure said. “Let’s try not to be.”

Marce nodded at this and turned back to the viewscreen. Superficially Dalasysla didn’t look substantially any different from any number of large spacebound human habitats; humans had settled on six or seven basic large habitat designs that could scale up and allow for some semblance of standard gravity by rotation. Dalasysla was a modified O’Neill cylinder, a model that had not undergone major revision for centuries. It was efficient, relatively simple, and just worked.

That is, as long as you had the people and resources to make it work. When you ran short of either, you developed problems.

“It’s dead?” Marce asked Laure.

“It’s dead,” Laure said. “Long dead. We took its temperature on the way in. No substantial difference from anything else out here. Cold on the inside as it is on the outside. Your team will be wearing suits to go over.”

Marce nodded again. His small team of scientists would have been wearing suits regardless. Eight hundred years is a long time. No one wanted to contaminate anything, or be contaminated. “So we shouldn’t worry about bringing along our marine detachment,” he joked.

“You’ll bring along your detachment,” Laure said. “Just because that place is dead doesn’t mean it can’t kill you.”

“That’s a fact.”

“This will be your first actual away mission, yes?” Laure regarded Marce as she said it.

“That’s right.”

“And you’ve never done any other sort of fieldwork.”

“Not really, no. I’m a Flow physicist. It’s higher-order math. You don’t have to go out into the field for that.”

Laure nodded. “It’s your show, Lord Marce. Our orders say so. But you should know that you’ve got a team of Imperial Navy scientists. All of them have been in the field. You have your marines. Field is what they do. Are you open to advice?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then here it is. It’s your show. But if you’re wise you’ll listen to your team when they talk. And you’ll listen to Sergeant Sherrill and her people when she tells you to go somewhere or not to go somewhere. You’ll listen and you’ll play it safe. We’re all a long way from home, Lord Marce. We all want to get back to ours.”

“Thank you, Captain Laure,” Marce said. “You’ll be glad to know that was pretty much my plan anyway.”

“Good,” Laure said. “You don’t strike me as particularly stupid, but you never know.”

Marce grinned at this.

Laure motioned her head toward the viewscreen. “Our visual inspection of the structure will be done in a couple of hours, and then your team is up. Since Dalasysla is dead you’re probably going to have to go through access ports on the surface.”

Marce nodded. “We were planning on that. We have the schematics of the structure from the imperial archives. We know where we want to go in. If that port is accessible, then it’ll be a short hike to the control room for the computer network.”

“You still think you’re going to be able to fire up their system?”

“Not really, no,” Marce said. “Eight hundred years is a long time. But it’s worth the attempt. It would save us a lot of time, anyway. And possibly answer a lot of questions.”

“I heard the recordings from the last days of this place,” Laure said. “I’ll be surprised if everything’s not just rubble.”

“Right.” Marce had read the transcripts and heard recordings of the last set of transmissions to come from Dalasysla, a few years after the Flow stream had collapsed. The short version was death, disease, despots and destruction. The longer version had kept him up wondering what the hell was wrong with people.

The answer to that was probably simple enough: When people knew that they were doomed no matter what they did, their long-term decision-making skills often went right out the airlock. Marce couldn’t blame them, but given the fact that the whole of the Interdependency was now facing the same fate as Dalasysla, he was hoping for other options.

Laure put her hand on Marce’s back. “Go get your people ready. And, Lord Marce.”