The airlock cycled open with a hiss of stale atmosphere, and Emma stepped into a corridor that hadn’t seen life in ten thousand years.
At least, she thought, adjusting Ari’s weight against her hip, not life that walks on two legs.
Dust motes swirled in the beam of Doren’s flashlight, dancing patterns that seemed almost deliberate. The walls were smooth—too smooth, with that uncanny perfection that marked Precursor construction. No seams, no visible joints, just seamless surfaces that curved upward into darkness.
“Temperature’s stable,” Doren said, studying his scanner. “Atmosphere’s thin but breathable. Whatever systems are running here, they’ve been doing it for millennia without maintenance.”
“That’s not creepy at all.”
He shot her a grin over his shoulder. “You wanted to come.”
“I wanted to not sit on the ship alone wondering if you were dead.” Emma followed him deeper into the outpost, her footsteps echoing in the silent corridor. “There’s a difference.”
The three weeks of travel to the Ashtar system had been uneventful—almost disappointingly so, after their narrow escape from the asteroid belt. They’d passed through Confederation checkpoints without incident, Doren’s forged documents holding up under scrutiny. They’d taken turns keeping watch, though neither of them had spotted any Grorn ships on their trail.
It had felt almost like a vacation. A strange, tense vacation in the depths of space, but still.
Now, standing in the bowels of an ancient alien facility, Emma was starting to wonder if she’d made a mistake insisting on coming along.
Ari, predictably, had no such concerns. She was wide awake in Emma’s arms, her dark eyes tracking something Emma couldn’t see. The baby’s silver skin seemed to glow faintly in the dim light—or maybe that was just the flashlight playing tricks.
“This way.” Doren turned down a branching corridor, following some signal on his scanner. “The energy readings are strongest towards the center of the structure.”
“Energy readings? I thought this place was abandoned.”
“Abandoned doesn’t mean dead. The Precursors built to last.” He paused at an intersection, checking his equipment. “Marina’s records mentioned automated systems that could run for tens of thousands of years without intervention. Self-repairing, self-sustaining. They designed their technology to outlive them.”
Comforting, Emma thought. Ancient aliens who planned for their own extinction.
They walked in silence for several minutes, the corridor gradually widening into something that felt more like a proper hallway. Alcoves lined the walls, empty now but clearly meant to hold something—equipment, maybe, or displays. The dust here was thinner, disturbed by their passage in ways that revealed the original floor pattern: interlocking geometric shapes that seemed to shift when Emma looked at them too long.
She focused on Doren’s back instead.
“How are you doing?” she asked quietly.
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Still processing. You?”
“Same.” She thought about Marina, about the way the old woman had cupped Doren’s cheek and told him she was proud. About the way his voice had cracked when he’d told Emma the story later, alone in the dark of their cabin. “She seemed... at peace, though. That helps, I think.”
“Does it?”
“A little.” Emma shifted Ari to her other hip. “My grandmother was like that, at the end. Calm. Ready. She said she’d lived a good life and was curious about what came next.” A small smile. “It drove my father crazy. He wanted her to fight, to rage against the dying of the light. She just laughed and told him to stop being dramatic.”
Doren’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “That sounds like a remarkable woman.”
“She was.” Emma reached out with her free hand, brushing her fingers against his arm. “You’ll get through this. And when youdo, you’ll remember the good parts. The letters she sent you, the things she taught you. That’s what matters.”
He caught her hand, squeezed it briefly before releasing. “When did you get so wise?”
“I’ve always been wise. You just weren’t paying attention.”
His laugh echoed off the walls, warm and genuine. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh since they’d left Tireth.
The corridor ended abruptly in a massive circular chamber. Emma stopped at the threshold, her breath catching in her throat.
The space was enormous—easily a hundred meters across, with a ceiling that vanished into shadow high above. The walls were covered in the same geometric patterns as the floor, but here they seemed to pulse with a faint luminescence, like bioluminescent algae in a dark ocean. In the center of the chamber stood a raised platform, and on the platform...
“What is that?” Emma whispered.
