Chimera 🌈 [ONC 2024]

1: Phaethon

14.07.2100

Leanne Ziegler had always wanted to go to the stars, and see their silvery white glow for herself. Instead, the stars came to her. One day, at her door.

"This is the BESS shuttle Mandala, registration number four-four-oh-niner-alpha-charlie-one-three-six, calling on all open channels. Anomaly, do you read? Over."

Leanne barely dared to breathe. She looked between the comms feed and the window gazing out over the huge unknown ship. The shuttle was stationed alongside its starboard flank, a little fish in the proximity of a great leviathan. She could make out the sleek white lines of its chassis but that was it. Her main guidance came from the crude cross-section Nerio colony had sent up to them from their probe data.

And everything was silent.

"This is the BESS shuttle Mandala, registration number four-four-oh-niner-alpha-charlie-one-three-six, calling on all open channels. Anomaly, do you read? Over."

"We're not getting anything." Cliff Buchanan, sitting next to her in the cockpit, scrolled through the real-time uplink information from Nerio. Leanne was not surprised to see the flat lines on every variable. "Nothing on any frequencies. Only background noise. No signs of life, biological or technological."

"Nerio, we're on negative up here," Leanne said. "Continue with agreed procedure. Send Phaethon round to Airlock-C."

"Copy that, Mandala."

Leanne sighed and waited for the little probe to emerge around the hulk of the gargantuan vessel they had christened the Chimera. She could only see the central module from where they were stationed. From the photographs, it seemed the ship was made of three huge sections, connected by a system of walkways and passages. An impressive centrifuge structure hung around it like a huge ferris wheel with the viewing pods snapped off.

One week ago, the ship had appeared in Martian airspace. Nerio colony, on Mars, knew nothing of it. And neither did the BASE, back on Earth. With political relations as they were between the BASE and Nerio, it didn't bode well.

Onboard Mandala, Leanne's eyes drifted to the shooting star ornament hanging above their console deck. It was utterly still, its pointed edges catching the greens of the LED lights. Everything else was bathed in shadow. The Chimera had blocked the illumination of the sun, making Leanne feel cold and barren. For over ten years she had been working in space, from the corridors of the lunar base Colchis to the fledgling Helios station, but this was the first time she had felt so alone.

The chatter on Nerio seemed to fade away. By the time their progress reached Earth, fifteen minutes would have already passed.

The shuttle's digital clock ticked on. As usual, Cliff hummed over their radio, some song she vaguely knew about coming home. Leanne wondered if he knew he was doing it.