Codename Alpha

Chapter 14

We stood and took in the surreal view from the 'vista' for a few minutes before coming back to our senses. It felt strange to just stand and watch the cars driving on roads a distance away. "One hell of a pit, too," I added. "I think it's a safe bet that it's noticeable from high up... looks like we've got our meetup point for when we contact the shuttle. Or... if."

"Well, that goes right back around to how we're even going to contact them. It's a safe bet to head to that radio tower," Jack said, pointing at the blinking red dots, "but if we do manage it, we'll have to head right back here as quickly as possible, because by that point they'll probably already be hours away."

"Not to advocate for commiting crimes, but it just so happens that there are unattended vehicles sitting down there with nobody in sight," Marine said. Indeed, those five white trucks at the far end of the pit had nobody around them.

"Wow, I did not expect that idea to come from you," I said. "But, yes. We're already being hunted for whatever we did that they view as a reason to shoot down an aircraft, along with avoiding arrest, so adding some grand theft auto to our criminal records probably wouldn't hurt."

"Until they dissect us in a lab," she added.

"Quite. So... take a truck, head to the radio tower, try and contact the shuttle, and then head back here where we will meet up with them. Problem there is that it's going to be six more days until the shuttle is even sent, so I suppose we've got a lot of sightseeing in store. We'll probably also have to ditch the car at some point, seeing as how the police are definitely going to be looking for a stolen vehicle with license plates... man, this is gonna be tough," I finished.

"That's a given, really, for anything that has to do with being on an alien planet. How are we even going to get into one of the trucks?" Jack said. "And what if the controls are different?"

"I imagine that they typically keep the keys for corporate vehicles in an office or something somewhere nearby. If the controls are different, however, that's... well, we'll cut that wire when we get to it." I crouched down and checked out the slope we were standing near. It wasn't too sharp of a decline and we'd have no trouble going down it, but the next one was a different story - any attempt to go down would likely result in a few broken bones. The path before it curved downwards to a series of gravel mounds and trailers a bit further out, near the garages. Certainly a long walk, but it was no trouble. I pointed these facts out to Jack and Marine, and then detailed the simple plan.

As I predicted, there wasn't much of an issue as we carefully walked down the wall. For whatever reason, Jack jumped onto the dirt path, seemingly just because he could. Everything in the quarry seemed far louder than it was in the forest - the crickets, the wind blowing, even our own pawsteps on the gravel. Everything had a very slight echo to it as well. Part of me felt like I was a character in a campy old gunslinger film, and the other like I was about to get stabbed in the back by a serial killer. The darkening red sky certainly didn't help either, but it was now being overtaken by the night sky.

Like many other aspects of this planet, there was something that I found oddly comforting about their night sky. It definitely didn't compare to the views I could get aboard the Valiant on the bridge or in the mess hall, but it still felt down-to-dirt to just see a few stars from the surface of a planet for once, dimmed as they may be. I also noticed the moon, just behind one of the hills, and how oddly bright it was. I was used to the dim red light that was reflected by Valdera's first moon, and this was a stark departure from it. 3/4ths of it's stark white surface was visible, and it was just as bizarrely stunning here as it was when we managed to snag an orbit around it. It was also keeping the area reasonably illuminated - granted, it was still as dark as one might expect nighttime to be, but there was still enough light to see.

Eventually, though, we came to a halt next to one of the trucks, at a point where the dirt path spilled out from a paved asphalt road. I climbed onto the stepping platform on the side to get a better look at the inside. It was too dark to really figure out what the controls were, but I could see that there were enough seats for all of us - two in the front, and a long bench in the back. I braced myself for the alarm to go off when I pulled the door handle, but thankfully, it didn't.

"Can you tell how to get it open?" Jack asked, standing on the ground next to me.

"I think it's a... mechanical key lock," I concluded, hopping down from the platform. "I'm gonna bet that we're going to have to roll the windows up and down ourselves, too."

"I guess that fits with the general technological level we've seen so far," Marine commented. "I wonder if they've even had a computer revolution yet."

"Well, that could've been something completely unique to us, for all we know. This is the only planet with alien life that has been encountered, literally ever, so pretty much every theory about how life develops is being tested right now," Jack responded.

"Sucks we're not specialists in this sort of thing," I said. "We've got a bit of an advantage in that department, though."

"I feel like a 'bit' is an understatement. A hundred years worth of advanced technology seems more appropriate, honestly," Jack laughed.

"Yeah, that sounds about right... well, they've got to be keeping keys for these cars somewhere around here. Probably inside these trailers," I said, pointing towards the two trailers that were across from the garages, on the other side of the road. I walked towards the closest one and stepped up the short staircase to it's door. I noticed that the door handle had a keycard reader, and at that, an incredibly bulky-looking one. "Do either of you have any idea how to open this?" I asked, turning to face Jack and Marine who were standing at the bottom of the steps, watching. "It's a keycard reader, so it obviously runs on electricity, and I'm guessing that there's some sort of fault in it that we can make good use of."