Chimera 🌈 [ONC 2024]

2: Valkyrie

Who would be told if Leanne perished? No one waited for her back home. Wherever home was now.

"Goddammit, Ziegler, pull yourself together," she hissed to herself.

Holding her breath, she twisted her body to get through the gap of the ajar door. Her oxygen cylinders scraped against the rim of the portal.

Her hands brushed against the floor, or the ceiling, of another module. She rotated her torch and found herself in a long round corridor, stretching off beyond the reach of her light. Apart from her breathing, utter silence loomed. She almost wished there would be a noise – anything – to break this void. Almost as if to prove to herself that she was actually here, and this wasn't all some elaborate illusion.

She felt for handholds nearby. Little by little, she pulled herself along the corridor. Other doors lined the curved wall, leading to unknown parts. But the only one she cared about right now was the hatch at the end of the hall. From what she could recall, the emergency airlock she had come through had been in the second of the ship's three large modules. She assumed the foremost sector was the command centre.

She pushed up the lock of the portal, relieved to hear it open. This one slid upwards, straight into the ceiling. She ducked through and felt her breath leave her.

She stared directly down at the dusty surface of Mars. The connecting tube she had just entered to was utterly transparent, the polycarbonate so clean that she felt nothing separated her from the vacuum. The dark splotches that decorated the Tharsis region sat right below her feet, as though she had left marks on the brown-red landscape. The enormous shield volcanoes were just gentle rises from up here, surrounded by scattered pockmarks on the rolling dome.

Also down there, she knew, lurked the great Martian guns, trained on the anomalous ship. Nerio had informed the BASE that any investigatory team would have ten days. Then they would scatter this vessel into oblivion.

Leanne slowly turned, not daring to look down again. She kept her eyes ahead on the next hatch. To her relief, there was a metal platform not far ahead. She pulled herself onto it and clung to the handhold by the door. A keycard slot occupied the space next to it.

"Good afternoon," a female voice suddenly said. Leanne just about stopped herself from yelling. She strained around, but she was still alone in the tunnel.

"Who's there?"

"My name is Valkyrie," the unseen tone continued. It had a soft transatlantic accent. "Please state your name."

Leanne swallowed past her dry throat. "My name is Leanne Ziegler, out of Wells station, originally from Helios. I have been sent by the United Worlds Federation Body for Air and Space Exploration to investigate the nature of this anomalous ship."

There was a long pause. Leanne continued. "I request entry to the cockpit. If unchecked, this ship will soon decay into Mars and burn up."

Whatever intelligence she was talking to, it must have been swayed by that, computer or not. But Valkyrie simply said, "Only authorised personnel are allowed access to the cockpit."

"I have a warrant. I have it somewhere..." It was stored in one of her exosuit pockets. The BASE had drafted a document in the event that she and Cliff had entered the ship and found it already manned. Cliff, oh god. He had been the commander; he should have been here.

"Are you an employee of the BASE?" Valkyrie asked.

"Yes. Leanne Ziegler. I have worked for them for ten years. I have been stationed on Helios for three years in total, and I had a tour on Endymion, and for the past year, I have been at Wells station. I was here when this ship...appeared." That was the only way she could describe it. "You have entered into Martian airspace, and Nerio colony requests information on your purpose and mission."