"You guys okay?" Kolya paused at the rover’s door and stared at Donovan and Lorkis as they sat in the passenger compartment. The rest of Ralissa’s team took up the other seats, all of them looking unsettled or morose. Donovan and the kid seemed to be the worst off, though.

"Just wishing I hadn’t watched those log entries." Donovan shivered and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. "Every time I think I’ve gotten past them, my head jumps right back to them again."

"Me, too." Kolya held his hand and tried to smile.

"I don’t think I’ll ever get over this," Ralissa mumbled. "I know it was a long shot, but I was hoping we’d find survivors. I hoped they could be reunited with whatever family they had left, and they could tell us about the places they’d been and the things they’d seen, like Cora and her crew did a few months ago."

"I wish it could’ve turned out that way," Kolya said. "We have everything in their flight recorder and the data from the ship’s sensors and the probes they sent out, but yeah, it’s not the same. Would’ve been fascinating to hear the crew tell us all about it themselves." She shrugged. "If they’d seen things that weren’t completely horrible, that is."

"True." Ralissa sniffed and wiped more tears away with her sleeve. "Instead, we learned not only that they died, but they spent their final moments in terrible pain and fear. No one should have to experience that at the end of their lives."

"Yeah. I wish no one ever did. All we can do is take the information they found back home and make sure we warn everyone about those spores." Kolya sighed and turned back to the door. "C’mon, guys. Time’s a-wastin’."

"You’re right." Donovan heaved himself off his seat and joined her. "We didn’t land and then drive all the way over here just to sit on our asses and sulk."

"Now you’re talkin’." Kolya grinned and dropped to the ground. In the distance, past the two rovers, sat the Mae Jemison. In addition to being atmosphere-capable, the ship also had a defense grid and weapons systems, though Kolya couldn’t make out the guns from here. Cora had explained on the way down that she hadn’t wanted to arm her ship during the refit, but Grishnag had insisted on at least a basic weapons loadout, just in case.

Which would come in handy if Galactic Expeditions asked them to scrap the Vancouver. Once someone at Gal-Ex saw the files Ralissa had sent, Kolya hoped they’d be smart enough to destroy the ship rather than act like the greedy corporations in any number of old vids she’d watched.

And, if they insisted on salvaging the Vancouver, she hoped Cora would blow it to hell anyway.

Kolya turned around and faced the structure ahead of the rover. While approaching it from this angle, it had looked like a pyramid, just as it had in the images from the probes, but she hadn’t grasped the size of it until now. The thing had to be at least three or four kilometers tall, and at least ten long. The probes had also detected the structure continuing for another two kilometers below the surface. Kolya wondered if its power source was at least partially geothermal. That might explain why it hadn’t run out of juice after all these centuries.

The wind picked up for a few seconds and the chill in the air made her shiver. Even in what passed for summer on this planet, the climate didn’t exactly make for a vacation spot. The ground for kilometers in every direction appeared to be little more than dirt with a few clumps of grass and weeds here and there, and the sky was covered in a blanket of dreary gray clouds.

Cora hopped out of the driver’s compartment of the other rover and walked around to join Kolya and the others. Dylan and the rest of the Jemison’s crew hurried to catch up with her and she took the lead as they walked toward the enormous building.

"Nobody’s ever been inside this one?" Donovan motioned at the structure. "Well, aside from whoever built it, I mean?"

"We’ve had a few scientific expeditions studying ruins on other continents every now and then," Ralissa said, "but nothing recent. As far as I know, this one has remained untouched since the inhabitants died off."

"So we’ll be the first people to step inside in who knows how many hundreds or even thousands of years." Kolya grinned and reached over to clap Donovan’s shoulder with her free hand. "Awesome!"

That brilliant smile of his reappeared, and though it was still shaky, it appeared slightly less forced than the few times he’d tried it during the drive. He was obviously still trying to push thoughts of the Vancouver’s crew out of his mind, but at least he seemed to be making progress.

"From what I’ve read in articles published about the other sites on this planet," Lorkis said, "the ruins were dated to around eight thousand years old. So, as Kolya said, we’re the first people in all those years to see the inside of this one."

"Very cool." Kolya beamed and lifted her arm to drape it around Donovan’s shoulders.

They reached the near end of the structure and found a high, narrow door.

"If this one’s like the other outposts or whatever they were," Ralissa said, as she hopped up onto the platform in front of the door, "it should open up when we’re close enough."

"Not just a motion sensor." Lorkis hoisted himself onto the platform and slithered toward the door. "We’ve learned from other structures like this one that the doors are keyed on more than one thing -- size, heartbeat, respiration, and body heat, just off the top of my head. It seems to be set up that way to prevent the doors from being opened by small animals wandering by, back in the time when small animals existed on this planet."

"That’s a good idea, actually." Kolya chuckled. "I’ve lost count of the number of vids I’ve seen of pigeons or squirrels darting into a grocery store, stealing a bag of potato chips, and running off with it."

Everyone managed a brief laugh at that, and Kolya beamed at finally raising their spirits a little bit.

Lorkis grinned and zipped right up to the door. It slid aside with a soft whoosh, dislodging a layer of dust covering its surface. He charged inside with a laugh.

"First!"

Grishnag shook her head, but couldn’t help laughing softly.

"Just hope we don’t find any more bodies in there," Donovan muttered, and Dylan glanced skyward.

"Don’t jinx us."

"Even if there were any dead people inside," Lorkis said, "they’d just be skeletons by now."

"So reassuring." Donovan managed a smirk as he followed the others inside.

Kolya stepped through the door and found a bare corridor with walls slanting inward from a wide floor to a narrow ceiling at least two meters overhead.

"Whatever species built this place," Cora said softly, "either they were really tall or they just liked a lot of open space." Her voice echoed along the corridor.

"I bet seeing the heating bill would make the shit curdle in my colon," Dylan muttered.

Cora laughed and shook her head.

The group continued walking for several more minutes before they finally turned a corner and found a series of doorways. Kolya stepped into the first one on the right and took a quick look around.

"Huh. Shelves, large tables or desks, and some chairs." The surfaces appeared to be made of green stone with a pattern resembling wood grain, but it could’ve been artificial. "As odd as the style is, it looks kinda like an administrative office."

Lorkis slithered past her and made his way around the room. "Huh. No computer interfaces, as far as I can tell. Maybe the people here packed up all their equipment before they left."

"I don’t think they had time." Donovan grimaced and pointed at the far corner of the room. "Why am I always the one who finds the fuckin’ bodies?"

Kolya turned and found a trio of skeletons sprawled on the floor.

"You’re not," Grishnag said. "Dylan and I found one on the Vancouver."

Kolya gave Donovan’s shoulder a light swat and approached the remains. Ralissa stepped into the corner of her eye, pulled her scanner from her pocket, and swept it over the skeletons. Kolya glanced at her and turned back to the skeletons. They’d been here long enough for everything except the bones to rot away. She raised an eyebrow.

"They look like quadrupeds."

"Huh. Like centaurs?" Donovan stopped beside her and frowned at the skeletons.

"I guess." She shrugged. "I dunno."

"These match remains found in ruins on other continents," Ralissa said.

"I wonder what happened to them -- why they died here and not somewhere else. I mean, if this really was an office or something similar, they probably died while they were right in the middle of something." Kolya turned toward Ralissa. "Plague?"

"No, there’s no indication of a plague or any other biological catastrophe on the skeletons, in the air, or on any of the surfaces in here. No evidence of manufactured toxins or bioweapons, either."

"None that your scanners are programmed to detect, at least," Donovan muttered. He headed for the door. "Gonna check the next room."

***

I hope splitting up was a good idea. Dylan stepped through the door into another corridor and tried to keep his breathing steady. They’d cover more ground this way, but he’d seen too many movies that had characters splitting up and then being abducted or murdered by something bursting out of the shadows.

Still, Cora had kept the teams large enough to handle an emergency or an attack. Dylan had Zilaka, Syala, Zadra, and Peter with him, and even though they weren’t soldiers, his wives could handle themselves in a fight. From what Kolya had said about the attempted mugging on her way to the Jemison, shonari were no slouches, either. And since Peter Gonzales was descended from the bioengineered super-soldiers created over a century ago, he should be able to kick some ass if anything tried to eat them.

See? Nothing to worry about. He peeked into another room and found it packed with raised platforms resembling medical exam tables, with instrument panels lining the walls. It reminded him a bit of the tables in the "respawn room" he and his wives had awakened in repeatedly, when they were stuck in that simulation several months ago. The surfaces here were made of the same green stone-like substance rather than metal, but the resemblance was enough to unsettle him.

It’s probably a medical center or a workshop. Anything that requires workbenches or examination tables would have certain similarities. Still, he gave the room a quick visual sweep and moved on. Like most of the other rooms they’d found, it was empty. He hadn’t even spotted anything that looked like an equipment locker to investigate.

"This is amazing," Zadra said, the echo produced by the vast corridor compounding her voice’s natural reverb. She peeked into a room across the hall and then entered. "I never get tired of exploring places like this. Like Kolya said before we arrived here, there’s a sense of the passage of centuries just hanging in the air."

"Yeah," Peter said. "I’ve been picking up the same kind of vibe. When we finish up here, I’d love to see if we can get funding for a long-term expedition. I wouldn’t mind spending a hefty chunk of my career exploring and studying these structures."

Dylan grinned as he walked over to the doorway to take a peek into the room. Being a hulking minotaur made the guy look like a brute at first glance, but he’d turned out to be enough of a geek that Dylan had stopped noticing his physicality not long after meeting him.

"Interesting," Zadra said as Dylan followed her inside. She motioned at a platform in the far corner, which had what appeared to be hard-light controls a few inches above the surface and a holographic display hovering over the top. Dylan didn’t recognize any of the glowing symbols on the controls or in the holofield.

"Hmm." Peter took a slow look around the room. "Could be a command center. Or administrative, or whatever you want to call it. Or maybe traffic control, or a science lab."

Syala let out a quick gasp. Dylan and Zilaka spun around to find her staring at something across the room. He followed the direction of her gaze and found three more skeletons slumped over at the base of another console.

"And there’s something I don’t like to find in places like this." Zadra sighed and walked slowly over to the bones. "Exploring ruins and deserted cities is fascinating, but finding things like this remind me that there were once people here who met a bad end."

"They’re huddled together." Zilaka flicked a hand toward the skeletons. "And they appear to have died with their arms around each other."

"Whatever killed them, they couldn’t escape it, but they lived long enough to try to comfort each other." Syala sighed and turned away. "I hope the next place we explore has fewer dead remains."

"Can’t argue with that," Peter muttered. He glanced at Zadra and nodded at the other console. "Do you recognize any of the text?"

"It looks like the writing we found in other structures on this planet, but no one has been able to translate it yet. We haven’t been eager to start pushing buttons without knowing what their functions are."

Dylan nodded. "Right. Wouldn’t want to accidentally set off a self-destruct or let something dangerous out of containment."

"Exactly." Zadra took a slow breath and turned back to the door. "Well, let’s see what else we can find."

***

"Huh. Dead end." Grishnag glanced around at Ayastal, Nishara, and Mila, then back to the end of the corridor. It widened slightly into a cylindrical chamber that didn’t appear to have a door. Aside from a circular indentation in the floor, it didn’t have any other features.

"Could be an elevator shaft." Mila walked up to the doorway, leaned over, and took a quick glance upward. The indentation lit up with a soft orange glow as if something had detected her presence, but she didn’t notice it. Grishnag reached out to her as she added, "The entire shaft is lit up pretty well, but I don’t see any elevator."

"Careful," Grish said, putting a hand on Mila’s shoulder and nodding at the floor. Mila glanced down and noticed the glowing disc shape for the first time. She drew in a quick breath and stepped back.

"Huh," she said when she regained her composure. "I wonder if it could be a teleporter. No, there wouldn’t be a need for an open shaft, even if they had tech that advanced. Probably an elevator with a broken or missing car. Or maybe there are horizontal shafts as well, like the ‘turbolifts’ on Star Trek." Mila grinned. "I overheard parts of the conversation Kolya and Donovan had over lunch a few days ago, when they were talking about old vids they watched when they were kids, and decided to find a few in the Jemison’s media library. Anyhoo, since this building is the size of a city, it could actually be a city -- like, the species that once lived here might’ve built their cities into single structures. In which case it’d make perfect sense to have either maglev vehicles or lifts that move along perpendicular axes. We haven’t found any evidence of the kinds of vehicles we’re used to seeing, and I doubt that would work very well with the kind of layout we’ve seen so far."

Grish laughed softly and held a hand up. "Easy, Mila. Slow down, remember to breathe."

"Oh. Right. Hah. I do get a little worked up, don’t I? It’s just that this is so cool!"

"It sure is." Grish smiled and took a cautious step toward the glowing circle. She crouched, leaned over, and twisted her neck to get a glimpse up the shaft. She found doorways at regular intervals on at least two sides of the shaft, and at some points there were three or four, running as far upward as her eyes could see. "Maybe we can bring some climbing equipment from the Jemison and come back for another look. We should head back before nightfall, anyway, and we can bring what we need back here in the morning."

Ayastal cocked her head, stared at the glowing section of the floor, and dug a credit chit from her pocket. She flicked it into the chamber and the chit popped straight upward.

"Oh." Mila beamed and poked her head back into the shaft. Grish did as well and watched the chit pause for a few seconds at each level before floating upward again. Mila glanced at her and said, "Okay, so it looks like they didn’t need elevators."

"Now that’s settled, I’m getting my money back." Ayastal chuckled and stepped toward the disc.

Nishara took her comm from her pocket and pointed it at Ayastal. "Guys, I’m sending you some video that I think you’ll find interesting."

The other teams responded over the next few seconds, indicating readiness to see what Nish was sending.

"Okay, Ayastal, whenever you’re ready."

Ayastal stepped into the shaft and levitated out of sight.

Kolya’s giggle came from Nishara’s comm. "That’s pretty cool."

Nish slithered up to the shaft, stuck her comm into it, and aimed its camera upward to track Ayastal.

Grishnag leaned in to watch her wife chase the credit chit.

"I’m rising at the same speed as the chit," Ayastal grumbled a few seconds later. She grasped the bottom edge of the next doorway and pulled, boosting her speed. She caught up to the chit, plucked it out of the air, and returned it to her pocket. Then she glanced down the shaft at everyone else and shrugged. "So, do you want to go floor by floor, or ride this all the way to the top?"

"We shouldn’t wander too far from the outside door," Cora’s voice came through Nishara’s comm.

"On the other hand," Mila said, "The control center, information archives, and so on, are probably at the top of the structure."

"Or they could be in the deepest underground level," Grish countered, "where they’re well-protected."

"Either way," Ayastal said, "I’m not sure how to stop my upward motion. I might need to step off on the next floor or ride it to the top before I can come back down."

"We’ve got a few more hours of daylight left," Kolya said. "I’d like to take a look around the top level and see what we find."

Cora pondered it for a second and had an audible grin in her voice when she replied. "Okay, then. We can check out the top floor, and after we return to the ship, we can send some probes in for a more thorough look around."

Mila did a fist-pump and practically squeed. Grish laughed and stepped into the shaft.

"Okay, Ayastal, we’re following you up to the top."

"Nish," Cora said, "set a waypoint at your current position before you follow her. Splitting into teams is fine and dandy, but I don’t want us to be separated by too much distance until we have a better idea of what’s here. Everyone, head for the waypoint. Grish, Ayastal, when you reach the top level, wait there for the rest of us to catch up."

"Will do," Grishnag said, grinning at the sensation of floating off the ground. "See you all in a few minutes."

***

"Let’s go, guys." Cora stood in the doorway and waited for Kolya, Donovan, Ralissa, and Lorkis. They’d found what appeared to be an equipment storage room a few minutes ago, but hadn’t been able to identify any of the devices in the lockers and cabinets. A door in each wall likely led to other rooms or closets, but Nishara had contacted them before any of them could open the doors.

Ralissa and Lorkis joined her. Kolya walked over from the far end of the room. Donovan took a few more seconds to ponder a basketball-sized orb on a pedestal before hurrying to catch up. He paused by one of the doors, shrugged, and tapped the panel.

"Might as well see if I can figure out how to open this before --"

The door slid aside and an alien skeleton fell out. It landed on top of Donovan and he backpedaled with a shrill scream. Dust puffed up around him, dislodged by the impact. He staggered away and brushed his hands frantically over his chest and sleeves.

"Eww! Augh! Shit!"

Kolya rushed over to him, panicking at first, but then she clamped her hand over her mouth and snickered.

"It’s not funny!" He kept swatting at his clothes for a few more seconds and then shuddered. "I hope I didn’t inhale any of that!"

"Sorry!" Kolya giggled. "I can’t help it! It’s just --"

"First I keep finding the dead bodies, and now this. That’s just piling on, at this point." He grimaced and sighed.

Kolya laughed again, grasped his hand, and gave it a tug. "Let’s catch up with the others."

"Great. That way, there’ll be a lot more people who can laugh at me the next time something like this happens." He glanced at the pile of bones as Kolya led him into the corridor. "I don’t even care what’s through that door now."

Cora patted his back as they walked past her. She took the lead and headed for the waypoint Nishara had set.

"You’re not the only one who’s found remains," Lorkis said with a chuckle, reaching out with his upper-right hand to clap Donovan on the shoulder. "When Zadra reported in a few minutes ago, she said her team found several more."

"I hate to say it, but we’ll probably find a lot more before we’ve searched this entire building. Given the size of this structure, there could be thousands of skeletons in it." Cora glanced over her shoulder and smiled. "I know that’s not very reassuring, but maybe it’ll affect you a little bit less if you just assume it’ll keep happening. At least, it won’t catch you by surprise anymore."

"Maybe. I’d rather not put it to the test."

"Regretting your decision to tag along?" Kolya nudged his shoulder.

"I would if I didn’t have you with me." He slipped his arm around her waist.

She grinned and slung her arm around his shoulders.

Cora smiled and continued on until she found the shaft marked by Nishara’s waypoint.

Kolya darted past her and hopped into the shaft. She grinned as whatever invisible force it produced lifted her off the ground.

"Whee!" She struck a Superman pose, clenching her right fist and thrusting her arm forward. "Up, up, and away!"

Cora, Donovan, and Lorkis burst out laughing. Donovan shook his head and stepped into the shaft.

"Okay, I can’t stay grumpy after seeing that."

The rest of the team followed him and Kolya, rising slowly to the top level.

"Over here," Dylan said from behind Cora. She glanced over her shoulder, smiled, and grasped the edge of the doorway. Kolya and Donovan were the first to exit the shaft. Cora followed, took a quick head-count and was relieved to find everyone waiting for them.

A split-second later she spotted the alien skeletons on the floor -- several hundred of them strewn from the shaft to the far end, miles away, possibly the entire length of the building.

"Oh, hell," Lorkis muttered.

"Yeah." Grishnag glanced at the remains and sighed. "Looks like the command center is probably around here somewhere. Or maybe this was just a high-traffic area."

"Whatever happened here," Ralissa said, "if there was time to get most of the population out, it’s possible that their leadership stayed behind to oversee the evacuation."

"Or their police or military." Dylan shrugged. "If their politicians were anything like ours, they would’ve been on the first shuttle out of here. These poor bastards might’ve been their equivalent of the National Guard, if they had one."

"I wonder what happened to them." Lorkis shivered as he slid around the nearest pile of bones. "I’m curious, obviously, but I’m not sure I really want to find out. It’ll probably be horrifying, or at least depressing."

"Probably." Cora walked between the skeletons and headed for the nearest doorway. "If we assume the worst, what we find out might not be that bad."

"We can hope so." Kolya shrugged and walked into the room. "Well, this is a whole lot of nothing." She turned to grin at Donovan. "But at least there aren’t any skeletons."

Cora stepped through the doorway and glanced around as the rest followed her. The rectangular chamber appeared big enough for both of the rovers to have a drag race, but it was empty. No consoles, tables, or monitors -- nothing but floor.

"Probably used for storage," Grishnag said as she turned back to the door. "Or maybe a garage for aircars or something similar."

Cora tilted her head back to stare up at the ceiling. There, she found a row of circular openings running through the center, from one end to the other. She couldn’t make out what was inside while her optics were in visible-light mode, but the openings didn’t look like skylights. They probably led to machinery hidden in the ceiling.

She decided to cycle through the electromagnetic spectrum to see if she could spot anything in infrared or ultraviolet -- but before she could start, a beam of light lanced from one of the circles near the center of the ceiling and swept over Kolya’s body, moving from her feet to the top of her head. She stopped in her tracks and her good eye opened wide in shock.

Donovan stared at her and his jaw dropped. He pulled himself together and reached out to her. "Kolya!"

She held still, stared down at her body as the light swept back down over her, and finally muttered, "Uh-oh."

Next Chapter: Chapter 9: Shadows from the Past