"Kolya!" Donovan rushed toward her.

"Wait," Cora shouted. She and Grishnag grabbed his arms and held him back. "It might …"

The beam faded. Kolya held still and raised an eyebrow.

"I feel okay. I think it just scanned me."

The room darkened. Donovan pulled away from the women’s grip and rushed into Kolya’s arms.

Dylan glanced at Ralissa. "Has this happened in the other structures?"

"No." She looked around slowly, her eyes wide. "This is new."

An enormous holographic projection filled the middle of the room, displaying lines of text in an alien language accompanied by graphics representing a human figure. Moving almost as one, the whole science team pulled scanners and recording devices from their pockets and aimed them at the projection.

"That language look familiar to you?" Cora stepped closer to the projection. She stared intently at it, and Kolya guessed that she was recording it and taking readings with her own built-in sensors.

"It resembles text we’ve seen in the other ruins," Zadra said, "but as far as I know, it’s never been translated."

"Huh." Kolya kept her left arm around Donovan and stuck her right hand into her pocket. "Well, it scanned me, then it showed us an image of a human. So whoever these people were, they knew at least the basics about us."

"There must be a reason none of these buildings did anything like this until a human came along." Lorkis glanced around at the others. "Hmm. Maybe because humans were the only surviving species in this sector of the galaxy, after whatever caused all those extinctions. Maybe they expected humans to be the ones to find this place first because you’re the ones who survived."

The graphic changed to what appeared to be a feed from a camera. The giant holofield filled with a landing platform surrounded by a meadow and, beyond it, a forest. A hole appeared in the air, a few centimeters above the ground, with slight rippling around the edge, like heat waves.

"I recognize that," Dylan said, and Cora nodded.

"It’s a space-time rift, but a tiny one."

A dark thing emerged from the rift. Kolya couldn’t guess its size with nothing nearby to compare it to. She couldn’t make out its exact shape, either -- its features rippled and blurred and faded in and out as if partially obscured by thick smoke. She caught a glimpse of what might have been a cape or cloak. Near the top were six orbs that glowed sickly yellow-green. Eyes, possibly.

Donovan shivered. "That is not right."

Several other figures entered the image from the edges, four-legged beings with two arms and what appeared to be a hard carapace protecting parts of their bodies. The dark figure spun toward them and the glow in its eyes intensified. It twisted and writhed, and the other aliens backed away from it.

It oozed back through the rift, and then the rift vanished.

The playback ended.

Dylan shook his head. "That can’t be good."

Another image appeared, the same landing platform with a sleek vehicle resting on it and a few dozen of the aliens walking around. A new line of text appeared at the bottom-left. A date stamp, Kolya guessed.

The aliens stopped suddenly, turned, and stared at something beyond the edge of the projection. The daylight faded quickly, night falling in only a few seconds. Black clouds appeared at the edge of the projection and covered the sky until no sunlight came through at all.

The image changed to a view of the whole planet, probably from a satellite or a ship. The entire atmosphere had turned black, causing the planet to resemble a solid sphere made of obsidian. More of the alien text appeared in the lower-left corner of the image before it blipped away.

A new image appeared with another block of text in the corner. The black clouds had begun to dissipate, revealing a cold, dead world. Kolya finally recognized it: Gamma Orionis b. It looked just like the images she’d seen during the mission briefing on the Jemison. The projection cycled through dozens of locations on the surface, each one littered with dead aliens and other animals, and rotting trees in the background.

The images finally faded away and the lights in the room came back up.

Donovan shuddered again and Kolya pulled him into a tight embrace.

"Looks like someone survived just long enough to create a record of the end of their world." Zilaka turned away and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. Syala and Nishara hurried over to put their arms around her.

"What the hell was that?" Dylan joined them and glanced over his shoulder at the others as he grasped Zilaka’s hand gently. "Something filled the air and just sucked the life out of everything?"

Ralissa shook her head. "I’m thinking it blocked all sunlight from reaching the surface. The climate would’ve turned too cold for anything to survive, and without sunlight, the bottom of the food chain would’ve died off and left the life forms above them with nothing to feed on. Eventually, everything would’ve died. Or almost everything. Somehow, there’s just enough vegetation left to maintain the atmosphere."

"Like nuclear winter," Donovan mumbled. "Cranked up to eleven."

"Since there’s still an atmosphere," Grishnag said, "maybe whoever did this had plans for using this planet for themselves."

"Seems they never got around to it, then," Peter said. "The planet’s still empty."

"For all we know, they’re on the way now." Grishnag glanced at the area the projection had occupied. "Since they used a rift to show up here in the first place, they could reappear at any moment."

"Assuming they still have access to the rifts," Cora said, "or whatever technology might’ve generated them. Or, it’s possible they ran into something else that derailed their plans, or even another species that wiped them out."

"There’s always a bigger fish," Grishnag muttered. "Terrific."

Lorkis headed for the door. "I need to see some sunlight."

"Well." Ralissa sighed. "At least now we have some idea of what might’ve happened to those extinct civilizations, assuming they were all killed off by the same thing."

Donovan trudged toward the door. "Hooray."

***

"Here’s another empty room." Grishnag led the others through the doorway and took a quick look around. The room was lined with low platforms that might have been benches, all made of the same greenish stone material, a couple of meters away from the walls. Rows of elliptical windows were set into the wall opposite the door. Faint sunlight streamed through the layer of dirt coating the outside of each window.

These people sure did like huge, open spaces. The house she’d shared with her first husband after moving to Earth from Hell’s Heart would’ve fit inside this chamber with room to spare.

"This looks good," Cora said. "We should head back to the ship before nightfall, but we can take a few minutes to pull ourselves together here."

"Sounds good." Kolya jogged across the room and sat on one of the platforms. Donovan followed her.

The rest of the group trickled across the room and picked out spots to sit, the Jemison crew gathering together on two of the benches and the science team on another. Nishara coiled up on the floor and leaned back against Ayastal’s chest, and Ayastal put both arms around her. Lorkis rubbed his back, stretched out on the unoccupied platform beside the rest of his team, crossed his upper arms and rested his chin on them.

Silence settled over everyone for over a minute before Ralissa finally spoke.

"What was even the point? Killing every living thing on this planet, I mean? I know these kinds of things have happened throughout history, but I’ll never understand why anyone would do that."

"Could be any number of excuses," Cora said. "The alien who came through the rift might’ve come from a world that was at war with the inhabitants of this planet. Maybe they wanted to occupy the planet and prevent any interference from the indigenous population. Maybe they just don’t value any life forms other than their own."

"We saw the way it reacted when it noticed the locals." Peter stared at the floor and shook his head slowly. "I couldn’t tell if it was fear or revulsion or outright hatred, but the impression I got was that it found the mere presence of the locals offensive, somehow."

"Could be that. Could be something else entirely." Zadra shrugged. "Even compared to most of the aliens I’ve encountered, this one was pretty damned alien. It could have motivations we may never understand."

"Honestly," Donovan muttered, "I’d sleep a lot better if I didn’t keep thinking about it."

Kolya rubbed his back slowly.

"Huh. Speaking of how different this alien was from most we’ve encountered, there’s something I never thought to ask about, but probably should have." Dylan glanced around at everyone. "Most of the alien species I’ve seen have a lot of similarities. Thought processes, emotions, wants, needs, even physical similarities." He chuckled and his face took on a slight red tinge. "When I first met my wives, I couldn’t help noticing how they all had their genitals in the same place. There were only slight differences in, uh, shape." He tugged on his collar and rushed onward. "There’s also the whole two-arms and two-legs thing. Well, aside from Nishara."

"Everything else seemed to be located in the right place, fortunately." Nish winked at him and he laughed softly. "That’s a good point, though, and I never thought about it, either. It’s odd how people who evolved on different planets all over the galaxy share so many physical characteristics."

"Could be that evolution favors one particular form." Grishnag shrugged. "Maybe this general shape has proven better at surviving in many different environments because it’s versatile. I remember there were scientists on Earth who speculated that two arms and two legs, with the head and eyes at the top where they could see more of their surroundings, would be more likely to develop independently on other worlds."

Cora smiled. "As far as genitalia go, before I was abducted through one of those rifts and ended up a century ahead of my time, there were still people who insisted that the human body was nature’s perfect design, despite the fact that it’s not very safe for males to have their ’gear’ as exposed as they are. A severe enough wound there would be fatal due to blood loss, and even a non-fatal wound could remove a male’s ability to reproduce. The way evolution works is, if an organism functions well enough not to die before it can reproduce, its traits will be passed on. So I guess they’re protected enough by the legs not to be enough of a disadvantage to lead to extinction, even though there are probably much better configurations a reproductive system could have." She chuckled suddenly, flicked her optics toward Dylan, and added, "Not that I’m complaining."

Lorkis aimed a shit-eating grin at Dylan. "Yeah, half the time yours is probably inside one of your wives, so I’d say it’s pretty well protected there."

Donovan’s jaw dropped and Kolya burst out laughing.

"Heh." Dylan’s face turned bright red and he tugged on his collar again. "Well, you’re not wrong."

Grish leaned over to nudge Dylan’s shoulder. "Which reminds me, you’ve probably got a pretty good build-up from your boosters, so that’s another reason we should head back to the Jemison soon."

"I hadn’t even thought about it after seeing that recording, but yeah, now that you mention it, I probably should take care of it before too much longer."

Kolya laughed and gave him a double thumbs-up. Chuckles and giggles rippled around the rest of the group.

That’s better. Grish let out a slow breath, relieved to see everyone’s spirits brightening.

"I’m launching some probes from the Jemison," Cora said. "I’m guessing they’re not big enough and don’t have the right heat signatures to trigger the door mechanism, so we can hold it open for them when we leave. They’ll be able to explore this structure faster than we can, and they can keep going all night while you’re asleep." She flashed a grin at Dylan and performed the "docking" gesture with her hands. "Or otherwise occupied."

Peter stood and stretched. "I don’t know about anyone else, but I think I’ll be glued to the monitors all night."

"Same here." Mila hopped off the platform and rubbed her hands together. "Don’t want to miss a second of whatever the probes find."

"Well, if everyone’s ready to head back to the ship …?" Cora smiled and waited for their answers.

"Sounds good." Dylan joined her and clasped her hand. "It’ll be almost time for dinner when we get there, anyway."

The others nodded and headed for the door. Syala slid her hand over Grishnag’s ass while passing by.

"Dinner first, then dessert." Syala fired off a lascivious grin before stepping into the hallway, and Grish had to take a moment to steady her breathing.

Oh, yeah.

***

"Hope I’m not intruding," Lorkis said as he slid into the observation lounge.

Kolya glanced up at him and waved, as did the rest of the crew. They’d gathered in the lounge after finishing dinner and had been dividing their attention between the laptops and game consoles on the tables and the large screen on the far wall. The screen had been showing them a steady flow of data and video from the dozen baseball-size probes Cora had sent into the alien structure. Ralissa’s team had been watching the live feeds and pouring over the data in their lab for the past couple of hours.

Cora smiled and waved Lorkis in. "Not at all. We were just unwinding."

"We needed to do something fun after seeing that recording," Zilaka said, glancing at the screen and looking away quickly.

Kolya turned to face the screen and caught a glimpse of another row of skeletons as one of the probes floated along a corridor.

"I needed to take a break for the same reason." Lorkis nodded at the screen. "A couple of the probes found what appears to be personal living quarters, and most of them had at least one or two skeletons in them. Some had several. Entire families, probably. Zadra guessed they knew there was nowhere to run, so they just stayed home and waited for the end."

"That’s so sad." Syala shook her head and let out a small sigh. "I can’t even imagine what it would be like to know your entire species is ending and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. Everything they did, everything they were, is gone."

"For me, it hits close to home, knowing Duthora’s sun will supernova in the next few thousand years. At least we know it’s coming and have time to evacuate our entire population. These poor people were taken by surprise." Lorkis slithered over to an unoccupied table, coiled up, and braced his lower arms on the surface. "We’re hoping to find more records. Not just recordings of their extinction, but info on their culture, their history, their hopes and dreams, the stories they told, the songs they sang. If we can find that, then something of who they were will live on."

"Won’t make any difference to the people who died, but I guess it’s better than remaining unknown." Grishnag drew in a deep breath and released it quickly.

"I don’t know about anybody else, but I could use a distraction from all the depressing stuff." Donovan stared at his laptop screen.

"Yeah, we probably all could." Lorkis poked at the keyboard in front of him. "Playing the same game as before?"

"Yeah, but mostly we’re just goofing around." Dylan motioned at Kolya and Donovan. "They’ve created their own characters. We’ll have to go easy on them since they’re starting out at level one."

"Mind if I join in?"

"The more, the merrier," Cora said with a grin.

"She means, of course, the more targets she has." Nishara winked at Cora.

"Mwahahaha!" Cora rubbed her hands together.

"Speaking of which." Dylan pointed at his screen and glanced over at Ayastal. "You’ve got a mugger incoming."

Kolya turned back to her own screen in time to see Ayastal’s character get out of her car and whip out an enormous rotary cannon. A scruffy man ran toward her with a knife, but Ayastal drilled the mugger with several hundred rounds, continuing to shoot him after he fell dead to the ground and scooting his body across the pavement.

"Oh!" Kolya burst into laughter as Ayastal kept firing, pushing the corpse through a gap in the guardrail on the side of an overpass. The mugger tumbled over and flopped to the ground far below, landing in front of an NPC’s car. The car hit the body, bounced and swerved out of control, and smashed head-on into a garbage truck.

Ayastal released a low, growly chuckle, got back into her car, and sped off.

Kolya turned her own car around and followed Ayastal to find out what her next move would be. Cora, Dylan, and several of their wives came into view, in the middle of a firefight with the city police -- and taking a few potshots at each other every now and then.

Dylan snickered. "Ow! You shot me in the ass!"

Syala giggled.

Ayastal aimed her car at Cora’s character and accelerated. Kolya laughed.

"Teach her a lesson!"

"Uh-oh!" Cora turned around to find out what was coming her way.

Ayastal belted out a sinister laugh as her car plowed into Cora, knocking her across the highway to land on the hood of an oncoming truck. The impact sent her spinning off to the side where another car slammed into her from the opposite direction, jolting her back into the middle of the street. Cora burst out laughing.

"That was amazing -- but I’m still alive!"

Kolya grinned, opened her weapons menu, and selected the sticky bombs. She accelerated toward Cora, tossed a bomb at her as she darted past, and whooped when the bomb stuck to Cora’s back. Cora’s optics opened wide and her mouth formed an almost perfect O.

Kolya tapped the G key and detonated the bomb. The explosion rocketed Cora straight into one of the cops shooting at the others, knocking him off his feet.

All the cops suddenly turned their guns on Kolya and shredded her car. Kolya squeaked and swerved toward the biggest clump of them. Her health dropped to zero a split-second before her car mowed them down. She leaned back in her chair and laughed.

"Worth it!"

"Bravo." Cora grinned and applauded politely.

"Thanks." A notification popped up on Kolya’s screen and she thrust her fists into the air. "And I just ranked up! I’m level two now."

"Nice!" Cora gave her a thumbs-up before turning back to her screen.

"How did your shootout with the local constabulary start, anyway?" Lorkis tossed a lopsided grin at the others, and Dylan blushed.

"It was kinda my fault. Some random NPC started pushing me around for no reason, so I beat him to death." Dylan shrugged. "I didn’t notice the police car in the background until both cops lit me up. Then it escalated from there. Now we’re all fighting for our lives."

"Sounds like a worthy cause." Donovan selected a weapon and rushed into the fray. Kolya laughed, searched through her weapons, and arched an eyebrow at the flare gun.

That looks intriguing. She equipped it and followed Donovan into battle.

At the edge of her screen, Zilaka switched her weapon from a rifle to a rocket launcher and fired into the middle of a cluster of police cars.

"Oh, here we go," Grishnag muttered before one of the cars exploded, the blast setting nearby cars on fire. She laughed as several more cars blew, followed by a few more. Dylan’s car got caught in one of the explosions, tearing it apart and sending shrapnel flying in every direction. He screamed in mock terror as his flaming body tumbled across the ground.

"Ahhhhh! Jesus Chriiiiiiiiiiist!"

Kolya burst into laughter. Nice to see everyone having a good time again.

Cora glanced suddenly at the screen on the far wall. "Oh. Just got an alert from one of the probes. It’s found something interesting."

"By interesting, you probably mean horrifying," Donovan muttered.

This couldn’t have been timed better. Kolya patted his hand and turned to the screen. In the place of the corridors she’d seen up to this point, it now displayed an enormous cylindrical chamber lined with oval-shaped panels and filled with hundreds of tanks mounted on a lattice running the length of the chamber.

Dylan’s mouth opened slightly as he stared at the image. Ayastal snarled softly. Syala shivered and crossed her arms over her chest.

"What are those?" Kolya glanced around at the others. "Storage bins? Stasis pods?"

"They remind me a bit of the tanks we were inside, back when we were trapped in that simulation." Dylan grimaced and turned away. Grishnag moved over to put her arm around him.

"Given what was done to their planet, maybe the survivors put themselves in cryonic stasis to preserve what was left of their species." Cora cocked her head at the image as the probe hovered farther into the chamber, closing in on one of the tanks. "If the blackness covering the entire atmosphere also prevented ships from leaving the surface, it might’ve been the only option they had."

Lorkis pushed himself upright and stared wide-eyed at the monitor. "We’ve found survivors."

"If the pods are still operating properly, yes." Cora started to smile, then her expression turned worried. "If whoever wiped out life on this planet didn’t sabotage the pods. I’m moving the probe closer."

"How big are those pods?" Grishnag squinted at the image. "I don’t really have a sense of the scale there, but somehow I’m getting the impression that they’re small."

"Measuring one of them now." Cora glanced at her and held her hands about three feet apart. "It’s this long."

"That’s roughly one-third the size of the average skeleton we found," Lorkis said. "Cora, are any of the pods different sizes?"

"Scanning them now. No, they’re all the same dimensions." Cora turned back to the screen as the probe hovered above one of the tanks. It had an oval-shaped window on the top surface, through which Kolya could make out features similar to the ones in the recording they’d seen earlier, but smaller and less developed.

"Children," Grishnag said softly. "Looks like they put all their children into stasis."

Nishara glanced around at the others. "I can see why they’d want to save their kids, but those children will have a rough time if there are no adults left to raise them."

"There could be adults in other chambers like that one," Cora said.

"Huh." Kolya pointed at the image. "Notice the open panels on the walls, loose cables, panel covers laying on the floor like someone just dropped them. Maybe those people started setting up the pods after their planet was hit by whatever that black-cloud thing was."

"So they might’ve planned to put themselves into cryo-stasis as well, but ran out of time after they saved a few of their kids." Grishnag sighed.

Cora nodded at the screen. "The probe found more adult skeletons scattered around the chamber, so you may be right."

"We’ll definitely need to take a closer look at those," Lorkis said. "If they are stasis pods and the occupants are still alive, we’ll have to be very careful so we don’t accidentally release any of them or turn off their life support. But once a follow-up team can study them and figure out how they work, they could revive an extinct species."

Now, that would be amazing. Kolya grinned at Donovan. "See, stuff like this is why I’m out here."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, we could be making history."

Cora smiled. "The probes will continue exploring overnight. We can go back there ourselves after breakfast and see what we can make of those pods. Maybe we’ll find more recordings that’ll tell us more about what happened."

"Awesome." Kolya beamed. "More stuff to explore. I can’t wait!"

Next Chapter: Chapter 10: Relentless