Chapter Text
There were three reasons why I was clinging to the edge of an alien remnant and not relaxing in ART's command center watching media. (Okay, I don't really relax.) In no particular order, the three things to blame were:
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ART
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Iris
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ART
The clear helm of my EVAC suit gave me a view of: 1) the curved edge of the alien remnant, 2) my gloved hands gripping onto it, 3) the shuttle where Iris was staring daggers into the screen displaying my visual feed, 4) the tractor beam yanking said shuttle away from me, backwards towards ART, and 5) a billion stars providing the backdrop. The alien remnant hummed beneath my fingers; a wave of static propagated through the suit, through my non-organic parts, and gave my visuals a blue tint.
I gripped harder. The remnant was a big brass (?) gold (?) ring of metal covered in symbols no one had any reference for. Something gravity-adjacent was happening in the middle of it, pulling me towards its center. There was no obvious energy source and the middle of the ring was empty, so even if it did pull me in, maybe I'd just float out the other side.
Maybe.
According to all the media I've ever seen, this was definitely a portal of some kind. It was one lightning-shaped special effect away from being in an episode of World Hoppers.
Holism had identified the alien remnant, tagged it, and sent the University an abbreviated evaluation of the ring–
Actually, we can throw a fourth one on the list:
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Holism
–but left it floating mid-space because it'd been in a hurry to meet us at the planet where B-E was threatening to indenture all the colonists.
Because ART can't let anything Holism does go, it got itself on the list for making us come here and then again for making me get out of the shuttle to physically interact with the thing, because it had a theory. Sure, send the SecUnit out to poke at the alien ring. The perfectly good pathfinders and drones weren't “autonomous” and “situationally aware” enough. Risk assessment didn't have much to go on regarding abandoned alienware floating in the dead of space, probably because anything with an ounce of self-preservation would have enough sense not to go poking at it.
(Iris was on the list for encouraging ART.)
(Look where we were now, Iris. Look where we were now.)
Despite the fact that the tractor beam was one of the wide ones, I wasn't being dragged safely away from the ring. I couldn't see the beam with my eyes – it was being rendered over my visuals in the feed, something-something-tachyon detection – but it was splashing all over the place. I didn't know if it was reacting to this region of space (ART had said it was Thin, which it probably thought was mysterious and interesting but I found more unhelpful than if it hadn't described the area at all), or maybe ART's tachyons were getting messed up by the remnant.
Which, uh, decided to wake up.
Green strands of energy whipped out from the middle of it. The gravity/pulling sensation got stronger.
“ART! Iris!” I yelled through the feed. “Come back here! It's activating!”
ART responded, but the green energy interfered with the signal. I assume. I was holding on for dear life at this point. My focus was divided between my slowly loosening grip and a deck view of Iris trying very hard to remain calm while pushing a lot of buttons.
About a thousand things were going through my mind, so I just barely saw a projectile (?) launch from the shuttle straight at me. The green energy lit up its edges. It was rectangular, roughly the length of a human hand. It hit me, my fingers dislodged from the ring, and I fell into a tangle of light.
The last thing I sent before being swallowed by the ring was, You asshole! You shot me!