Chapter 56: Fantasy |
The world spreading out beneath them was apparently quite consistent in its monochromity, dark plantlife that ate sunlight, even when all it amounted to was a carpet of grass or moss, the sections devoid of plantlife typically deserts, beaches, mountain ranges, the occasional salt flat, all either grey or off-white.
An interesting choice of color palette, but …
Derek’s thoughts were interrupted by Atticus’ shout of “Holy shit, is that a dinosaur?”, accompanied by an image being thrown on the main viewscreen that looked almost right, some kind of generic, long-necked dinosaur lacking anything that would let an exact name, or a “closest Earth analog,” for that matter, to be pinpointed. Yet …
“It can’t be a dinosaur, it doesn’t have any feathers,” Mimi groused.
“I don’t think sauropods had feathers,” Atticus said. “They were already on the edge of overheating as is; if they had feathers, they’d probably cook themselves.”
“Still, it’s probably just convergent evolution,” Derek commented. “But am I the only one for whom ‘proximity to the dinosaurs’ is the only thing that matters for our landing site?”
A chorus of nods was the only response he got, but it was also quite clear.
So the Dragonfly took a second loop around the planet, only the bare minimum of sensors watching for threats coming from deep space, every other one trying to scrape up every scrap of data possible from the planet.
“This is officially the weirdest planet I’ve ever seen,” Ye-in muttered, throwing yet another new image up on the main screen. “Is that a living cistern?”
Whatever the black stuff was, it was clearly not just a single kind of plantlife, but rather that just about every plant on the planet, at least all the ones they could see, shared the pigment that colored so much of the world.
For example, the current curiosity was a series of practically fungus-like treetops fusing into a massive plateau that half-looked like it could bear the Dragonfly’s weight, the whole array held up almost fifty-meter-long trunks that, according to their “ground penetrating” radar, eventually split into something akin to mangrove tree roots to suck up as much of the water that had accumulated beneath the light-absorbing roof as possible.
“But are there dinosaurs?” Atticus asked retorically.
Ye-in shrugged. Probably a whole bunch of fish, insects, and bats.”
Actually, that reminded Derek …
“Hey, have we seen anything that looks like a mammal yet? Or a bird?” he asked. “Everything down there looks cold-blooded.”
Not that alien creatures had to be identical to their Earth counterparts, nor did they necessarily have to share the same link between form and function, but still … it was weird.
“Hold on,” Mimi told him, then began typing away on her station while chewing on her lower lip.
Huh. She was clearly busy doing something, but Derek knew better than to interrupt her while she was working that hard. Also, he knew that she only got like that when it wouldn’t take long; if she expected to be busy for a while, she’d explain before working.
So, about two minutes later, the picture of the organic cistern was replaced by a heat map of one of the larger “dinosaur”-covered plains of the planet.
“I think it’s too hot for making your own heat to be profitable,” she finally said after thirty seconds of trying to make sense of things. “Any species evolving to become warm-blooded would probably go extinct before it’d get anywhere.”
“Huh, a planet stuck in the Cretaceous,” Derek commented. “Cool. But what the hell do we call this place?
“Latin or Ancient Greek are overdone,” Ye-in said, followed by Atticus chiming in with a “Also, the Latin word for black is a racial slur.”
“Zebra?” Derek suggested.
“The barcode horse? I mean, we could do worse …” the other man responded unenthusiastically, at which point Mimi suddenly clapped her hands and spun around on her chair.
“We could call it Barcode!”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Derek laughed. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. And not quite as on the nose as anything else we’ve come up with.”
Of course, the discussion didn’t quite stop there, but five minutes later, Derek was allowed to send off the “found a planet” form, declaring the star system to be “Eclipse” and the local habitable planet was, indeed, called “barcode.”
By then, they’d also managed to find the perfect place to set down, a rocky plateau capable of holding up underneath the Dragonfly’s weight, with cliffs on one side falling off towards the ocean, and gentle slopes down the opposite side bleeding into a massive valley filled with the local “dinos,” not to mention that there were both ore veins in the mountain and forests in the valley available for resource harvesting. Not to mention that they’d made sure that the trees they’d likely be chopping down weren’t unique or endangered.
Now, it wasn’t like there were likely to be consequences for them even if they drove a few species to extinction, not on a planet this far away from humanity’s usual stomping grounds, even if there were technically laws in place to protect all biospheres.
Morally, however, not having “trash the local environment” be the first thing they did on a new planet was the least they could do, and didn’t exactly cost them much.
And speaking of keeping the plantlife of the planet beneath them intact and untrashed … it was time to land.
First, the Dragonfly spun in place until her main propulsion was facing the way they were going.
Second, the main propulsion was lit off at full thrust, rapidly slowing the ship, allowing gravity to assert its hold, and the multi-thousand-ton starship began to fall like a meteor, atmosphere around it beginning to heat up, brief flashes of flame curling skywards as certain patches.
Thirdly … thirdly, a good fifty percent of the ambient mana that normally powered the various combat and structural enchantments was poured into a mere three types of magic.
One to keep the ship upright, a second to vent the heat their passage through the atmosphere was creating, and a third to reduce the Dragonfly’s weight to almost nothing while the thrusters on the ship’s belly began to fire once their altitude dropped below two thousand meters, rapidly bleeding off velocity until they had to be shut off to avoid melting the ground they’d be imminently landing on, with the landing gear unfolding at just that moment.
The ship fell the last thirty meters or so, landing lightly. Well, “light” for something as massive as a starship. The whole vessel shook, actually bouncing briefly as the landing struts flexed to absorb the impact, and a crash somewhere in the distance proved the old adage about how no matter how hard you tried to tie everything down, you’d always miss something.
Carefully, he unfurled his [Aura] and sent it back through the ship, in the general direction he’d heard the crash, finding that the kitchen had turned into a bit of a mess. Again. It wasn’t that they’d forgotten to put something away and tie it down properly; they’d actually forgotten to lock one of the cabinets, and now there were several jars of various preserves scattered across the floor in pieces.
Wonderful.
But that was a problem to be solved after he’d gone outside.
Derek jumped out of his seat and began to march towards the main airlock, turning to the others before stepping off the bridge.
“Come on, let’s go!”
Atticus scrambled off his chair, seemingly jerking himself awake or, more likely, coming down from the adrenaline shock of the ship’s “impact,” while Mimi hauled herself into a standing position and Ye-in followed at a more normal, sedate pace.
While they walked, Derek realized something.
“We should jump out together,” he suggested. “Be the first people to step onto this planet together.”
“I like it,” Ye-in decided, then glanced over her shoulder to Mimi. “We have normal external cameras that can record that, right?”
“Sure. But can that stay private for now?” the engineer asked.
Ye-in nodded. “Do you mean we shouldn’t send it to our families, or just not send it to the press?”
“No press,” Mimi declared. “I wasn’t talking about the other stuff.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Derek said as he hit the button to lower the ramp. “Is it recording yet?”
“Has been since Ye-in brought it out,” Mimi told him as she held out her hand. “All together?”
Derek laughed. “Yeah, all together.”
He took her hand in his right and Ye-in’s in his left when she also offered it, then she also grabbed Atticus’ hand, and together, they walked down towards the rocky plateau they had set down upon, pausing at the very bottom on unspoken agreement.
One final deep breath, shared glances, and then, together, near-simultaneously, they took the final step onto the soil of Barcode before letting go of each other, then quickly walking towards the plains-facing side of their landing platform.
The sight was both gorgeous and mind-meltingly strange, the dark “grass” contrasting the gigantic dinosaurs whose alabaster scales were likely another attempt to not get cooked by the blazing sun overhead, seemingly something straight out of an ancient black-and-white movie, something the bright blue sky overhead quickly disproved.
“Yep,” Derek declared. “This is where a house is going to go!”
“A house?” Atticus asked, one of his eyebrows raised comically high.
“I mean, there are four of us,” Derek pointed out. “We can claim more than just this plateau. We could build something for us here, and then lay individual claims to something we personally like.”
“Works for me,” Ye-in said, while Mimi chimed in with “If you guys tell me what it’s supposed to look like, I think I can draw up plans.”
And Atticus just shrugged. “Okay, where do we start?”
“By enjoying the view for a bit longer?” Derek offered.
And then a new [System]-window popped up in front of his face.
Congratulations, Stellar Captain, for discovering a human-habitable planet!
This world, strange as it might be by your standards, is perfectly capable of sustaining human life. It is not perfect, but then again, nothing save Earth and fully terraformed planets is.
For discovering what may become another home for humanity, you have received 50,000XP.
Oh, and there was that. Even better.