Network Effect

It wasn’t the plants or the ag-bots—that was normal. Plants could be engineered to do a lot of things for colonies, like produce gases or other chemicals. But for one thing the complex didn’t resemble the Adamantine colony plans, not at all. And you would expect everything to be more messy and human, with things under construction, piles of materials, temporary habitat structures, or the remains of temporary habitat structures that had been stripped to build permanent structures. No air or ground vehicles were visible, no boats or docks on the lake. No trash. This place looked simultaneously abandoned but well cared for. Like whatever it was being used for, it wasn’t meant for humans to live in.

I sent images to Overse and Thiago, and there were stunned exclamations. Indicating the complex with the weird ribs, I asked, Is that an alien structure? (It was the obvious question.)

No, it couldn’t be, Overse said, but she sounded like she wasn’t certain.

Thiago said, I agree, that looks too … usable for humans to be an authentic ruin. It also looks too old to have been built by the Adamantine colonists. I have seen reports claiming that groups compulsively constructing unusual structures is an early symptom of remnant contamination. It could have been built by the Pre-CR colonists, under the influence of the remnants.

That was probably right. Intrepid hero explorers found alien ruins all the time in shows like World Hoppers, but in reality it was more like what happened to transports that got trapped in endless wormhole journeys. Nobody knew what happened or what anything looked like because everybody involved died.

The compulsive construction thing sounded really creepy, though.

Thiago added, It could also just be an early Pre–Corporation Rim structure of a style that we don’t recognize.

That’s probably what the Adamantine colonists thought before they got eaten or turned into liquid or whatever.

The ag-bot took another step, bending its neck down into the plants. I didn’t see any humans or Targets, but there were definitely power sources here because I was picking up some interference on my scan that indicated something like large-scale air barriers in operation. Ratthi had mentioned they might be in use to keep the colony’s atmosphere contained, so that made sense.

My drone had found the end of the dock structure and got a view of the far side, which was a flat valley, punctuated with angular rock formations sticking up out of the ground randomly. The dock and the drop shaft must be on a plateau and this was the edge. Reddish brown scrubby grass dotted with bits of brighter red covered everything that wasn’t rock or dirt, the colors brilliant even under the overcast sky. There was a long straight obviously artificial canal that came out of the base of the plateau somewhere below and ran off toward the rising hills some distance away. The light wind came from that direction, ruffling the grass.

There was no sign of other buildings. Maybe Thiago was right and the complex was from the Pre–Corporation Rim colony. If it was, their budget must have been big enough to make the company break out in greed sweat. All that currency and none of it going for bonds.

(If they had gotten company bonds, at least somebody might have been around to say Hey, maybe we should go when they encountered the toxic alien remnants or whatever else it was they had encountered.)

And where was everybody?

My drones sent me an alert and I checked their inputs. They were picking up ambient audio: voices echoing against manufactured stone and projectile weapon fire.

Oh, that’s where everybody was.

The audio bounced off the walls and obscured its direction of origin; without the drones I wouldn’t have been able to get close without being spotted.

The standoff was toward the center of the dock, in the main drop box loading chamber. With the map I’d downloaded from the space dock, I found a ramp to the upper levels, past corridors and doorways to empty rooms, out to an open gallery level overlooking the dark arrival chamber. It wasn’t a great spot for a sniper, even with the cover of the low safety wall. The angles were bad and I had to send my drones down to the embarkation floor to get a good look at who was fighting who.