Page 4 of Trove’s Purpose

No matter what she had to give up to make it happen.

The landing was smooth as butter. She’d had rougher airplane landings than how well the small spaceship entered the atmosphere and came to a halt on the hard packed dirt. It was all preprogrammed for her, including the way the starship shut down afterwards. She unbuckled herself and stood, needing to stretch to get the strength back into her limbs, to get used to being out of zero gravity.

And sure, maybe buy a little time before the inevitable.

But she only indulged in that for a moment before going to the door. It opened with the touch of the console and swept up, exposing her to the air of an alien world. Just another crazy thing to add to the last two crazy weeks of her life.

Chee stepped down, her boots crunching on the hard packed dirt. It felt so normal. Which it shouldn’t, right? Like, this wasn’t Earth, it shouldn’t feel so unremarkable.

The golden sun overhead was blazing, but she barely felt the heat in her suit. Fully enclosed, safely sealed inside, she was completely isolated from this place as she approached the entrance to the recycling facility.

From the report she’d been given, this place was old. Seventy years or so. But it had been abandoned fifty-some-odd years ago after some tragedy killed the entire crew and locked down the communication relay, totally isolating it from the rest of society. Any attempts at restoring the facility had been complete failures. The company that once ran it lost so much money, they surrendered their claim rather than lose more trying to restore it.

It was huge, she knew. Extending miles in every direction and down below. But here, at the surface, the entrance was a simple building. A single square, about the size of a decent shack. It had a metal roof and solid metal walls. The door was heavy duty, sealed tight, with a console to the side that blinked merrily, alerting her that whatever powered this abandoned place was still fully functional despite the time that had passed. Humble and unassuming, it blended in very well to the endless, hard packed dirt that surrounded it. If she hadn’t had the exact coordinates, she would probably never have been able to find it by herself.

Biting her lips, she pressed the console. It immediately came alive but did not let her interact with it. Not until she pulled the little circular device from her suit and pressed it against the top. The disk flashed green a few times before halting on a steady, stable purple. Then, with a hiss, the door opened.

It led to a small scrub room so that the door outside could seal before the second, inner door opened. The process was automatic, meant to keep the inner, clean air from mixing with the air from the outside. All Chee had to do was stand inside and wait for the doors behind her to shut, then for the doors in front of her to open, in sequence.

The second room, the other half of the shack room, was a lift that groaned to life when she stepped inside. It clicked and hummed as it began descending with her. She didn’t have to input a destination; it just began going down. She bounced on her heels, trying to work out some of the nervous energy as she waited. She needed to find this crew without surprising or scaring them. She was totally unarmed – though that had been a battle with herself. But she thought if she came in with weapons, they’d be less likely to hear her out and more likely to take that as a threat.

With how big she’d been told this facility was, she wasn’t sure how long she’d have to look. But she’d just woken up, this was practically her morning, so she had all day to hunt down someone. Anyone. She just needed to find one person. Then, they could take her to the others.

The lift finally came to a halt, giving her no indication of what floor it came to. The lift doors in front of her separated, opening into a long, dusty hallway. There were lights overhead, but they were very dim, casting more shadows than anything. The entire hall was empty, quiet. There were marks on the ground in the dust where someone must have walked recently, so she was relatively sure that this was where she was supposed to be.

It also had the benefit of giving her a handy guide to follow. The others who landed must have gone down this way. There was literally no other person or animal it could be. Nothing at all was alive on this planet.

This place was creepy. Not just because of the dim lighting. The obvious marks of people on top of the layers of dust and neglect was eerie. Especially as she could see the doors lining the hall had been opened and all the marks showing where they had been searched. Emptied. Looted for anything valuable or useful.

According to the report, and doing some math to change it from Standard time to time she was more familiar with, it had been a few months since the crew had crashed here. What kind of state would they be in? What would they be like after all that isolation?

Were they even alive?

The hallway ended in what appeared to be a lobby that branched into more halls, offered a few lifts, and had a big, circular desk in the middle. The signs of life were more abundant here. She could see not just where things had been moved and walked through, but where supplies and boxes and various machinery pieces had been placed.

What were they doing here? This didn’t appear to be the frantic movement of people desperately searching for hope or supplies. There was purpose here. Intention. And there were clearly a few different lifts and halls that they went through on what must be a regular basis.

Chee came to a halt at the front desk. What looked to have been a directory or a welcoming area for some kind of front desk crew now held some neatly stacked boxes and a couple tablets and bread that had been left half eaten, no one at all concerned about rodents or pests because this was a completely lifeless world. There wasn’t an ant or roach in sight to eat that food.

But it looked fresh. Half a loaf of bread, casually half unwrapped. It wasn’t stale or moldy at all. When she reached over the desk, it depressed easily under her finger. It was fresh. So, they had food at least. Or a functioning food synth making machine.

Then, maybe she should try to find the mess hall. That would be the heart of the facility. Everyone had to eat, so that was where they’d have to return to eventually. Therefore, that would probably be her best bet to-

The pressing of something hard to the back of her head wasn’t hurtful or fast. It was just a gentle pressure that appeared out of nowhere that made her go still. She couldn’t see who was behind her, she hadn’t even heard anyone approach. She also didn’t know exactly what was pressing into the back of her helmet.

But she knew. She definitely knew.

Though alien guns were different in design, they were still just triggers and barrels, and she knew the barrel of a gun. She was also aware of intention, and, somehow, there wasn’t any ill intention in this. Just a soft, quiet warning.

“Good,” a male voice hummed from behind. “Now, hands up. Nice and slow.”

She did as she was told, lifting them into the air. Grateful now that she hadn’t brought a weapon. She was not comfortable in skintight clothes, but at least it was obvious she had nothing on her. She was not a threat he needed to deal with immediately.

As directed, she raised her hands in the air, palms forward. Doing her best to appear as non-threatening as possible. She couldn’t forget that she was in a den of literal murderers right now. They were apparently role-playing as good, upstanding citizens, but even good, honest, moral people could commit murder under the right circumstances.

“Now turn around.”

Still moving slowly, deliberately, she put her foot down and pivoted. Her helmet was shielded from the front, so she knew he couldn’t see her, but she could see him. And she was met with the tall, familiar form of a domini male. Familiar because these were the aliens that worked most closely with Earth. When aliens were discussed back home, domini were the aliens in question. They were the ones on TV. They were the ones who represented Earth to the Coalition and the Coalition to Earth.