Nano Bytes - A Collection of Short SciFi Stories

Silent Garden, by TyborTigadoro

With a soft thud of metal on metal, we are down.

"They want us to sit tight," Cosgrove says. "They're sealing and pressurizing the hangar. Should be safe in a few minutes."

"Alright, everyone, prepare to deboard," I say. "Cosgrove, keep listening, but see if you can find a way to transmit around their block. We need to get this back to Terra-2 and—ideally—Centauri."

"Aye, Captain."

"So where is everybody?" Martinez says.

"What do you mean?" Sipes says.

"Big hangar like this, I'd expect there to be people, or aliens, or someone."

"It's definitely human-made," I say, pointing at the massive wall adjacent to our shuttle.

"Well I'll fuckin' be," Martinez says.

332 is scrawled in faded yellow paint across the wall. It would be a hell of a coincidence for an occupying alien force to use human numerals.

"Please exit now," a voice booms through the hangar. "It is safe."

"Well, guess they're done with text messaging," Cosgrove mutters.

The four of us walk down the shuttle ramp onto the floor of the hangar. I am immediately hit with the deafening sound of silence. No heavy machinery. No hustle of activity. No whirring fans. No pneumatic popping of doors. Just an oppressive silence in a massive maze of rusting shuttles.

"This is fuckin' creepy," Martinez says over our com link.

Despite myself, I laugh.

"Atmospheric composition is identical to Centauri-4," he says.

"Identical to Earth would probably be a more appropriate comparison, all things considered," I say, withdrawing my suit's visor.

I take a deep long breath. The air is dry and cold. It smells stale, even more so than the recycled air we've been breathing since Centauri.

"This way," the disembodied voice booms.

A series of yellow pulsing floor lights leads to an undifferentiated section of metal wall.

"You heard the," I pause, "thing."

As we follow the lights to the wall, I cover my ears with my hands. A terrible sound of metal grinding on metal pierces the dead silence of the station. In the place of the bare wall is now an opening into a dark hallway, illuminated only by the dim yellow floor lights.

"Any luck getting a signal out, Cosgrove?" I say.

"Negative, ma'am," she replies. "Every frequency is garbled. It's like they don't have any coms of their own, so they're just jamming everything."

"Alright, I guess we'll have to deliver our intel in the flesh when we're done here," I say.

The grinding—terrible again—ends with a boom as the wall closes behind us. My helmet lights switch on automatically in the resulting darkness.

"What the fuck are those?" Sipes whispers.

I follow her gaze to—to something. There are two figures in the hallway ahead. They are moving toward us on two legs, but the motion could hardly be described as walking.

"Are they limping?" Martinez says. "Or— or drunk?"

"What the fuck?" Cosgrove says. "Those aren't human."

And he's right. The clanking and rattling that accompanies their awkward movements betray a mechanical origin.

"Come with us," one of the machines says in perfect Centauri, as the pair stumbles toward us.