Beyond Light

Not a Foe.

John and his team moved to the place where the drones hovered, half a kilometer up the black hill. The repairs of the Beyond Light began, and according to Xi and LIBRA, they would take at least a couple of days until the hull was fixed enough for the shields and stealth systems to be operating again.

He cursed in his mind. They could be using those lost days to do something instead. But they were on an unknown floating structure inside a gas giant with their defenses decimated. Anything could happen. Goliath or its ships could appear again.

He felt empathetic for the Eternity of Return. They didn’t have a fraction of the luck and preparations they did.

“So, an entrance,” Derek pulled out his TR6 and marched with it readily. “This place is enormous. Could lead to thousands of different paths.”

“And maybe it’s filled with those silver robots you fought on Vita Nova,” Yuri drew his IRM22 out. “Let’s be ready to see if something’s there waiting for us.”

“Keep your eyes open and don’t fire unless I order it so,” John took his TR6 from his back next to his L23n shotgun. “The last thing we need is to trigger some alien robots and get us attacked again.”

“Those bastards surely hurt our baby,” said Derek. “Gotta say that repairing her isn’t gonna be easy, and much less with missing parts and fewer people. We’re on a tight one, Cap.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” John squeezed his lips and shook his head left and right. “And I feel s**t is just getting started.”

They continued strolling. A few minutes after, the tunnel and the drones surrounding the marked triangle became visible: A hexagonal tunnel with an apothem of three meters and purplish dark margins stood on the floor, just like the one they found on Vita Nova.

“Dobryj dyen?” asked Yuri. “Anyone home?”

“Another of these tunnels,” said Derek, the three men standing10 meters from it. “Must belong to whoever created the ones on Vita Nova. Should we deploy a convoy and see what’s inside?”

“But what are we supposed to find inside?" John hesitated. "I don’t think we should risk more people or vehicles without knowing what to expect.”

The black drones above them beeped their red lights like a colony of bumblebees getting mad at intruders. They all floated up and pointed their aiming lasers at the interiors of the tunnel.

“What’s happening?” asked John. “Don’t shoot.”

“Commander,” Com. Officer Jeffrey Emmerson spoke through the voice channel. “We are catching the signals of the same robots you fought on Vita Nova. Be careful!”

John frowned and raised his rifle. “Good. More contacts. Be ready. Team Foxtrot,” he spoke to the soldier squad behind. “Reunite with us at our position. Be ready for engagement.”

“Yes, sir. On our way,” the NCO squad leader responded, and the 12 soldiers in green armor began to jog up.

The drones kept shooting their harmless red pointer lasers, but no shots came from the tunnel. Was something really there? Maybe they were being tricked by something, John switched to his fireworker shotgun and took a step ahead, making a hand sign to Yuri and Derek to follow up.

“Damn. Maybe they are luring us into something,” whispered Derek. “I’ll go first. Keep up.”

The three showed up enough to see through the vertical tunnel, their weapons going first, and what they were expecting appeared on sight: a reduced group of three whitish-lilac robotic units, strolling up just as if they weren’t aware of the human invaders.

It was a biped robot with its typical round and flathead of a single eye; a sphere with its two arms kept short, and a crab unit of six legs and two arms with its shields off, just as if they weren’t about to engage in combat. There was something that made them different from the robots on Vita Nova’s structures, though: their eye color. These had lilac lights on their eyes, paws, or their deactivated weapons, contrasting with the blood-red of the Vitanovans robots.

Team Foxtrot arrived. “Step back, everyone. Keep your weapons up,” ordered John, and everyone marched back, the drones not putting off the lasers from the incoming units.

The trio of synthetic aliens rose from the tunnel, turning their heads and eyes to their human visitors, but not stopping in the least nor unleashing their weapons. They marched towards John. He pointed his shotgun and put his finger on the trigger, his subordinates doing the same. But the machines didn’t mind.

“What the hell is the meaning of this?” a soldier murmured. Mumbles and whispers came from their stance.

“Cap, they look different,” noticed Derek.

“I know,” John took his final step back, but the machines stopped at three meters from him. Uncomfortable silence inundated the area.

“...Who are you?” John didn't lower his shotgun. The biped at the middle just tilted its head and blinked its eye.

“Are they challenging us to stare contest?” joked Yuri. "Is that how we'll fight from now on?.

“Everyone, don’t lower your weapons,” ordered John and did the opposite, saving his firework shooter on his magnetized back. He extended both of his hands up as if he was being arrested, and took a step ahead.

“Wait!” Yuri exclaimed. “Are you crazy?!

John ignored him. He sauntered towards the trio of machines, standing in front of the 180m tall biped. He lowered his hand and extended it to the machine. Anxious mumbles sounded behind. He didn’t care. The platinized robot lowered its head, staring curiously at the human gauntlet.

“Commander?!” Jeffrey’s voice spoke. “What’s happening there? We are detecting those machines at your very position. Permission to connect to your POV cameras.”

“Permission granted, Flight Lieutenant,” responded John. The images of Mike, Xi, and Jeffrey appeared on his HUD, paling and letting their jaws down as they stared at the alien unit in front of their commanding officer.

“W-what did you do, John?!” Mike frowned with his open jaw and a surprised grin. “Did you listen to my plan and you broke into a song about friendship like a musical?”

“Oh my,” murmured Xi, cursing something in Mandarin before speaking English. “Commander, may we ask what is going down there?”

John put his hand away and then extended it to the crab unit. He slowly stretched it, as if he was introducing himself to a stray cat, and put it on the machine’s white claw. The crab’s purple eyes on its short, elongated body beeped, but it didn’t seem to care —or understand— the human mannerisms. But it never showed any signs of aggression.

“LIBRA?” asked John. “Are you there?”

“I’m always here, Commander,” responded the suave-voiced AI. “May I connect to your suit’s systems? I can try out to establish a direct connection with them.”

“...Alright. Permission granted.”

A percentage bar appeared on John’s hud, increasing from 0 to 100, and the zodiacal scale symbol appeared on the corner of his HUD. “Wait for a second. Identyfing connexion protocol and creating a common web. Hmm. Nothing compatible. Creating sequence of primal binary codification for boolean instructions… Got it. I’m catching something... I think they want you to follow them, Commander.”

“Follow them?” frowned John, trading looks with everyone. “What’s that about?”

“I still don’t know. But it’s more than obvious that they aren’t foes. From what I’ve understood they want you to come with them. Sorry, but I will need more time and interaction with them to create more complex decoding into something we can understand. Their algorithms are nothing we’ve seen before.”

The three machines turned around and walked to the hexagonal tunnel, getting inside again, but standing on the diagonal ramp, like police dogs waiting for their human companions.

“So, what are you gonna do, Commander?” asked Jeffrey.

John looked at his troops before taking a decision. “Alright, let’s follow our new friends.”

“Really?” Mike frowned. “Are you getting inside? Did you hit your head back in that space quarrel?”

“We have nothing else to do in the meantime we repair the Beyond Light, or nothing we can do, to be precise. Besides, we’re on a dead point again, and these machines look different from the ones on Vita Nova. They must want us to see something important. Maybe we’ll find more people from the Eternity of Return,” he launched a hand sign to his troops to follow. “Let’s go.”

They began to descend like defensive but curious cats, following the machines behind. John didn’t know what to believe at that point. Was he hallucinating from the toxic atmosphere of Hawking-616f? Maybe his suit had an undetected breach.

Or maybe not. He thought about it for a second. Although they were only robots, John and his team had just made the first pacifical encounter with an alien species —or something belonging to them. But to who? It was unlikely those giant insects or Goliath, although the red-lighted machines on Vita Nova said otherwise.

He felt as if he was about to do something stupid, but they’d be fighting already or would have been taken down the moment they landed on that super floating station. With them in that state, why would the machines even need to play dirty tricks? He realized how much they still didn’t know; there were more variables in the equation than he would have liked.