Anya flicked switches on the control panel of the transport. The reactor hummed to life and the motors of the transport’s hyperjets spooled up. “Buckle up,” she said into her headset.

  Gate Two’s outer door slammed open as it finished its cycle. A mist of red dirt fell from the gate’s opening. She pushed on the stick and added thrust, the hyperjets sung through the frame of the craft and she felt the transport lift into the air and then the gate was behind them.

  She pulled the transport up and high over the Primus Valley, she could see the dome getting smaller in her mirror. Anya tapped at a screen, “Chad, do you have control?”

  “Yes I fucking do,” the AI said through the speakers of the cockpit. She unbuckled her belt and got up as the controls moved under remote control. She moved into the back where her companions bounced in their seats.

  “How long?” asked Rodrigues, the burned side of his face wrinkled as he spoke.

  “Flight time of thirty eight minutes,” Anya replied. “How did you find out about this place?”

  Rodrigues smiled. “Let’s just say a certain friend of mine got a few minutes alone with the old water mining maps. The complex was within transport range and he knew I’d be interested.”

  The transport jumped with turbulence and Anya could hear the hyperjets compensating. “Any idea what’s down there?” she shouted over the high-pitched whine of the engines.

  “Hopefully, untold treasures,” Rodrigues shouted back.

  Anya moved backwards through the craft and checked on the Scout that was strapped in the back of the transport. The lines were tight and the vehicle bounced on its suspension.

  She made her way back to the cockpit and strapped in for the remaining flight. The transport blasted through a dust storm like a dart through cloth. The mountains and valleys of the Wastelands scrolled below them. Anya had to admit, there was a beauty to their dead world. A desolate beauty.

  She’d heard that on Earth, even the deserts were teeming with life on and below the surface. Not here, she thought. Here there’s nothing but dust. In school she learned that the planet would not support even microbes. It was a perfect environment for sterilisation. Every core sample and experiment had detected not a speck of life. Outside of Primus, the planet was dead.

  A shadow grew on the horizon, the tip of Merlin, a terraforming station the size of a great mountain. She wondered what technology must be left inside, what it would fetch on the market. No transports could travel to it, the aircraft needed to land as the energy drain of the hyperjets would outstrip the power units’ capacitors, and the reactors couldn’t keep up. She looked at the flight range, another nine minutes before the transport would need to land and recharge. The flight time to their destination was six minutes remaining, it would be tight but just doable.

  A few minutes later, she saw a small group of buildings in the dirt. “I see it,” she said to the crew. “Moving in for a landing now. Helmets on.” She took back control and felt the feedback of the craft in the controls. Anya took an initial orbit of the compound, checking the ground for rocks and debris. Which there were plenty of. She found a spot that looked well suited for the transport to land and brought the craft down. Through her concentration, she could hear her breathing against the dome of the helmet.

  As the ground neared, she added thrust and the hyperjets screamed their song. With a punch, the transport’s legs made contact with the ground and she cut the engines. She and the crew unfastened their belts as the hyperjets spun down. She flipped the switch for the cargo hatch. She looked back to see the Scout descending from view as the hatch lowered.

  Anya shut down the craft and the displays went dark.

  She moved to the rear of the transport and Rodrigues stopped her. He removed a pistol from his suit and handed it to her. “Here,” he said.

  “What’s this for?” she asked.

  “Who knows what’s in there,” he said.

  He turned and left her holding the UNIT Five-O. She checked the safety was on and stowed it in the pouch of her suit. She swallowed down nerves.

  Williams was powering up the Scout when she climbed in after Rodrigues. She closed the door and the vehicle lurched backwards off of the cargo ramp of the transport. As they moved forward, Anya studied the dust-caked buildings. They were the typical printed buildings of the Research Division, drab and basic designs that could be made quickly in remote locations.

  The Scout rumbled over rocks and then made it to the soft dust around the compound. Williams stopped the vehicle and blew a strand of her long hair from her face. “Alright, we’re here.” The vehicle powered down and Anya opened the door.

  The nearest building had a sign by the airlock. She couldn’t make out all of the words as dust covered much of it up. All she saw was ‘Bio-’

  Gorski moved forward and went to the airlock’s control panel. He brushed dust from the screen and touched it with a gloved finger. It lit up. “Holy shit,” he said, his Russian accent thick over the comms. “It still has power.”

  “It must have a micro reactor,” said Rodrigues. “That alone is worth the trip.”

  Gorski tapped at the screen and the outer door of the airlock rolled aside. “What the fuck?” he said.

  Anya moved to get a better view, she saw splatters of blood up the wall of the airlock. “Oh my God,” she breathed into her helmet.

  “Whatever happened,” said Rodrigues, “it happened a long time ago. It’s old blood. Let's move inside.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Anya did her best not to look at the dark red spray of blood as they crammed into the airlock. Gorksi tapped at another panel and the airlock cycled. The outer door rolled into place and air pistoned into the chamber. A flash of green and the inner door rolled out of the way.

  Inside, the lights came to life, flashing in a randomised rhythm. It hurt her eyes as the bulbs danced to silent music. A trail of blood led off into the building, as though someone had dragged themselves or dragged.

  Desks were set up in an open office fashion, papers, old models of tiles, pens and retro terminals were strewn over the desks as though the place had been searched. Rolling chairs were tossed around the floor. Things seemed to move in the staccato flashing, her hand twitched to go for her gun, but she worried she’d shoot one of her crew in a panic.

  “Here,” said Gorski. Anya moved forward, and saw the remains of a body. The deflated Interstellar Research Division uniform held nothing but bones. A dark corona of blood encircled the body. The position of the limbs made her think whoever it was had crawled to this spot and succumbed to their injury.

  “What happened here?” Anya asked.

  Rodrigues crouched by the body. “Some kind of fight, gunshot in the airlock, and the poor bastard crawled here. Real slow death.” He stood up, his knees clicked. “At the end of the Glory Days, things got bad.”

  “Worse than they are now?” asked Dawson.

  Rodrigues laughed. “My grandpa used to say it was some nightmare shit when the last Starship took off and everyone knew there was no way off world.”

  Anya felt a shiver run down her spine. Her mother had told her similar stories to scare her and her brother.

  “The whole place has been turned over. Likely our friend here and his buddy fought over whatever secrets they were cooking up in here.” He looked down at the body. “And he lost.”

  They removed their helmets and searched the place for a working terminal. Many had burned out, victims of that fatal solar storm that had wrecked so much of the electronics. Anya tried the bulky old tiles, but they were dead.

  “Here,” said Williams. “This one’s booting up.”

  “Nicely done,” said Rodrigues. They huddled around the desk as Williams threw discarded belongings to the floor and set the screen of the terminal up right.

  The InterstellarOS logo gave way to a login screen. Williams dug into her pocket for a masterkey. She slotted it into the side of the terminal and the screen flickered and elements of code flashed across the screen.

  ‘Welcome’ appeared and then the home screen loaded. Williams removed the masterkey. “OK,” she said. “Let’s see what secrets these guys were hiding.”

  There were terrabytes of data files, raw feeds from sensors. Williams flicked through the directories looking for the telltale signs of value on the market. Data wouldn’t cut it. They needed equipment.

  There was so much to go through that the rest of the crew turned to scavenging the building. They bagged any electronics in good order, stationery, and cables - anything worth a dime on the market.

  “When we’re done,” said Rodrigues, “we’ll strip the reactor. It might be the only seriously valuable thing left here.”

  “Guys,” said Williams. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

  They huddled around the desk again.

  “I was hacking around and… well there’s a live connection to Merlin,” said Williams.

  “Merlin? I mean, that’s cool and all but whatever’s out there, we can’t get,” said Rodrigues.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone being able to connect with it,” said Anya. “We should see what we can find out.”

  “Fine,” said Rodrigues.

  Williams connected and the mainframe of the terraforming station loaded. She loaded up the station diagnostics schematic and a wireframe of the mountainous machine filled the terminal. Red numbers and status symbols covered most of the screen.

  “Shit,” said Williams. “There’s power, but the whole platform is offline.”

  “I knew it,” said Rodrigues, pointing towards the horizon beyond the building, to the gargantuan pyramid that hunkered there. “The fucking thing’s dead and always has been. Just a stupid dream.”

  “Wait,” said Williams.

  Anya saw her point to a green mark outside of the terraforming station. She pawed at the screen, zooming in. The green mark turned into a cylindrical wireframe, green numbers and statuses dotted around it.

  Rodrigues leaned in. “Is that…”

  “A Starship,” Williams breathed. “It’s… it’s fully functional. God damn thing is ready to launch.”

  They stared at the screen as though they had discovered a god. No one broke that silence, they just watched the green readouts refresh.

  Rodrigues stepped back and rubbed the stubble of the good half of his face. “You know what this means,” he said, turning to them. “There’s a way off this rock.”

  Gorski frowned and raised a hand to the terminal. “The last Starships left decades ago. How can this one still be here?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Rodrigues. “We just got a golden ticket to Earth.” He rubbed his chin and paced. He came back to the desk and looked at Anya. “Can you fly that thing?”

  Anya’s eyes widened. She’d never seen the inside of a Starship, never even dreamed of flying one. “If… the controls are similar to a transport, I can maybe figure it out? But-”

  “Good enough,” said Rodrigues. “I heard they pretty much fly themselves, you just need to know how to find the ‘go’ button.”

  “It better be big and red,” said Anya.

  Rodrigues stood in front of them. “Alright,” he said. “Hear me out. Between us, we have a hacker, a pilot, and some of the best scavengers on the planet. We know our way around this tech. I say we find a way to get to Merlin… and we get off world.”

  Dawson laughed. “You want us to cross the Wastelands? The Big Open? The Outside? Jesus, Rodrigues. The transports can barely fly anymore.” He pointed to the terminal. “And we don’t know whether that thing works.”

  Williams pouted her bottom lip. “Telemetry says the Starship’s good to go.”

  “How do we know it’s not an AI trying to trick us,” said Dawson. “What if this data is just Chad fucking with us - you know it loves this sort of thing.”

  “No,” said Williams. “The link isn’t running through ChadComm. It’s a direct connection to Merlin’s core.”

  “Exactly… an AI,” said Dawson.

  Rodrigues held up a hand. “Something that complex they wouldn’t have put in the hands of a meme bot like Chad. It’ll be something… else.”

  Dawson laughed. “This is Interstellar we’re talking about. That would be just the kind of joke they’d have built as an easter egg.” He put his hands to the side of his face and waved them. “Oh watch out, you thought this was a planet terraforming machine and I’d be a super-intelligence, but would you like some cat GIFs?”

  “Enough,” said Rodrigues. “I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want to die on this hell-hole like my whole family. I want to see the sky with my eyes, breathe fresh air that’s not from a processor. I want to see the ocean. This is our last chance. We have who we need to get this done. Who’s in?”

  They looked at each other. Anya felt nerves knotting in her stomach. Williams put up her hand. “I want off this dust bowl.”

  Gorski followed. Anya raised her hand. They looked to Dawson, he sighed and shook his head. “You’re going to get me killed one of these days,” he said as he raised his hand.

  “We’re going to need an engineer,” said Anya. “Who knows what state that station is in, the launch systems… and we need someone who can jerry rig something that can get us to Merlin.”

  Rodrigues nodded. “Call your brother.”

  “Jackson?” She laughed nervously. “I haven’t spoken to him in years.”

  “We need someone we can trust. If the company learns one of their Starships is just over the horizon-” He blew imaginary dust from his hands. “Gone.”

  She closed her eyes. She remembered the heated argument they’d had, the screams and swearing, the thrown objects. “You’re dead to me,” she had said. But now she could get them both off Mars, to Earth. They could walk in the open air like they had seen on the films they had streamed as kids. Put their toes in the Big Blue.

  She nodded. “I’ll call him.”