'Our enemies must have made a mistake/ said Aemos, holding on to the edge of a console to steady himself. The saruthi can't be here. If they ever inhabited this system, they must have long since abandoned it/
Yet/ I countered, 'the heretic fleet's advance group presses on with great determination and purpose/
The Essene continued to descend, closer than it would normally come to a planetary body. Only ribbons of atmosphere remained, and Maxilla clung to the ragged surface, passing barely ten kilometres above the bare rock. Drizzles of shooting stars rained past us.
What's that?' I asked.
Maxilla adjusted his sensors and the resolution of the display. A huge wound in the planet's crust yawned before us, a thousand kilometres wide; a cliff-like lip of impact-raised rock with a vast cavity beneath.
The sensors can't resolve it. Is that meteor damage?'
'Perhaps, from an angled strike/ said Aemos.
'Did they go past or in?' I asked.
'In?' barked Maxilla, incredulously.
'In! Did they go in?'
Aemos was leaning over the servitor at the sensor station. 'The drive wake ebbs and disappears here. Either they were vaporised en masse at this point or they indeed went inside/
I looked at Maxilla. The Essene bucked again, thrown by a gravity pool, and the bridge lights went out briefly for a second time.
'This is a star-going ship/ he said softly, 'not built for surface landing/
'I know that/ I replied. 'But neither were theirs. They have more information than we do… and they have gone inside/
Shaking his head, Maxilla turned the Essene down towards the vast wound.
The rift cavity was dark, and limitless according to the sensors, though in my opinion, the sensors were no better than useless now. A dull red glow suffused the darkness far below us. The violent shaking had stopped, but still the hull creaked and protested at the gravitational stress.
We had the sudden impression of moving through some structure, then another, then a third. The display revealed the fourth before we passed under it: an angular hoop or arch eighty kilometres across. Beyond it, more in the series, towering around us as we progressed, as if we were passing down the middle of a giant rib-cage.
'They're octagonal/ said Aemos.
And irregular/1 added.
No two of the rib-arches were the same, but they displayed the same form and lack of symmetry as their companions – the shape we now instantly associated with the sarathi.
These can't be natural/ said Maxilla.
We continued in under the cyclopean spans, passing through a dozen, then a dozen more.
'Light sources ahead/ a servitor announced.
A dull, greenish glow fogged into being far away down the avenue of octagonal arches.
'Do we continue?' asked Maxilla.
I nodded. 'Send a marker drone back to the surface/
A moment later, the rear display showed a small servitor drone straggling back up the vast channel towards the surface, running lights winking.
We ran on past the last arch. There was another judder.
Then we were riding clear into light, smooth, pale, green light.
There seemed to be no roof or ceiling to whatever we were in, though inside the planetary cavity we undoubtedly were. Just hazy green light, and below, a carpet of wispy cloud.
All turbulence stopped. We were like a ship becalmed.
* * *
The atmosphere in this place – logic battled to make us remember we were inside the crust of a planet – was thin and inert, a vaguely ammoniacal vapour. None of us could explain the source of the pervasive luminescence or the fact that the Essene sat comfortably at grav anchor in the serene quiet. As Maxilla had pointed out, it was not a trans-atmospheric vessel and it should have been impossible to stabilise it this close to a planetary body without severe stress damage.
From its system registers, the Essene seemed happy enough, happy to have ridden out the vile stellar storms of KCX-1288 into this safe harbour.
Apart from minor impact damage, only two of the ship's systems were inoperative. The sensors were blind and giving back nothing but odd, dead echoes. And every chronometer on the ship had stopped, except two that were running backwards.
