Auronium

Soft blue light illuminated the rocky cavern. 'Wow,' Theresa breathed. She stood in field team greys, laden with equipment. She tapped the screen of her hand probe with sharp nails. It began to scan the surroundings.

'A-maz-ing,' Clive agreed, whistling through his teeth. He took off his helmet and tucked it under his arm.

The walls of the dome-shaped cavern were ghostly and translucent in texture. More pathways could be seen winding out of sight. Each of the four Gamma Colony students adjusted their torch helmets to the lowest setting. The smell of rock, soil, and damp permeated their nostrils.

'It's similar to...' Felicia fanned her arms out. Red hair trawled to her shoulders. 'A biosphere. Look at the network of tunnels. Taste the air, how it reeks of cleanliness...'

Theresa inhaled the familiar tang of recycled particles. As long as a generator didn't rust or break down, it could filter oxygen indefinitely. It was easy to tell the difference between artificial air and natural compounds. With a generator, air thinned with age; it became musty and yellowed.

The air tasted of centuries.

'Maybe this planet isn't as uninhabited as we first thought,' Vormaz murmured. He licked his lips nervously, hovering behind whilst the others wandered amongst the architecture.

Clive glowered at the central pillar in the room. It resembled sequoia redwood in the width. It glittered as though coated with sequin beads. 'How annoying.'

Vormaz smirked. 'How come?'

'Well, this planet got listed as certifiably useless. No valuable minerals. No life...'

Theresa coughed. 'Um, hey? Biologist here. There's plenty of life. Hydogen buoyed cubozoas, cryptodiras the size of a large boulder; and my personal favourite, the - '

'- Intelligent life, Theresa,' Clive interrupted, rolling his eyes. 'With all the University funding and courses, we pretty much charted everything by now. Certainly no signs of ancient cultures on the planets in this solar system, yeah? But then we get...this.'

Theresa examined the cavern with a keen eye. Murals of abstract images shone out on the surfaces, faded with time. They displayed illustrations of suns, moons and blue constellations; comets trailed paint and galaxies clustered in dark corners.

The GCU Scientific Expedition Department would erupt into hysterics if they realised their students on this little field trip ended up revealing a previously undetected element. Something like a new civilisation, for example. Something like where they all stood at this precise moment in time. Theresa giggled.

Her probe squeaked, and a plethora of information flashed on the fluorescent screen. The match made her want to drop the device in sheer astonishment; instead she scrolled through the data, her hands trembling.

'You are not going to believe this,' Theresa said. She tore her eyes from the probe to the room again, flicking over the murals. She picked out more details. Dark swirls, perhaps black holes. Blips and dots surrounded the swirls, little stars hovering in the event horizons. Colours smeared in a mess over the ceiling. Did the swirls denote wormhole technology? The circular pattern of the stars were similar to station lights, greenlighting a wormhole for safe travelling. How advanced could this civilisation be? But of course, they have to be advanced...

Clive huffed. 'Believe what?'

Theresa grinned, manic. 'This dome is made out of Auronium.'

A brief silence enveloped the survey team. Then, cries of, 'What?' And 'Are you serious?' broke out. Theresa held up the probe to their disbelieving eyes. She enjoyed the expressions mutating on their faces. Awe. Joy. Greed and ambition. The information caused a flurry of unanswered questions; the data on their probe gave them the evidence, but not the how.


That is, how the entire dome was built out of Auronium. Building something out of Auronium was like weaving a city out of sunlight. Something impossible. In their wildest dreams, it never even occurred to them for such a rare substance to be used this way.

Theresa left the probe with Clive and ran her hands over the walls, which were cool to the touch. At close inspection, speckles resembled interlocked hexagonal shapes. She sniffed the material carefully. Auronium always had a distinct aroma, but it was obscure at best. The surface smelled of air and earth, of heady leaves, and the musk of rock hidden in the dark.

She scratched experimentally at the wall, took out a small scalpel, switched it on and trained the laser against the Auronium.

Not even the slightest burn made. Her manic grin fixated in place.

Auronium was by far the most sought after substance in the galactic nations and empires. It was so scarce, though, so rare, that conflicts over claim easily erupted from its discovery.

When Felicia handed her back the probe, Theresa announced: 'That's enough excitement for now. I'll call Fran, let him know where we are, beam up the data...' She used her comms to tight-beam their ship pilot.

She peered down one of the outlying tunnels whilst waiting for the link to patch through. The dome easily matched the size of a small space-station. Theresa couldn't think how they even missed something like this before.

A green light flashed. 'Hey. Fran. Fran?'

'Yes?' Fran's voice drawled. Theresa imagined the dark haired pilot, surrounded by screens and consoles and the smell of bleached metal, with planetary terrain cresting out in uneven waves before him.

'Got you some pretties.'

'Ooh, pretties? Give.'

'Uh huh. Sending encrypted data.' She scrambled the pixels with a simple button press and sent it. 'Images are on there. That's what we'll be exploring.'

Crackle and static burst through the tight beam. Theresa waited, noting the position and location of her team. Felicia seemed interested in the murals; Clive and Vormaz dipped into the various side tunnels, torch helmets glinting.

'By Gamma!' Fran's voice burbled, 'The Colony's gonna have a fit, seeing this...'

'That they will,' Theresa agreed. 'Keep it to yourself for now, eh? Wait till we're back out before sharing the find.'

'Sure. How much longer will you be out there for?'

'Two hours max. Disengaging.' The green light switched off.

'Finished?' Felicia beckoned Theresa over to the central pillar. 'We found something really interesting.'

On one side of the huge pillar, a fresco decorated with orange streaks circled an indent. Inside lay a sculptured nest. Vormaz held something in his hand.

'Eggs. Auronium eggs,' Vormaz added. 'At least if we're judging by colour...'

Theresa bristled. 'Be careful with them.'

'Not a problem,' Vormaz replied. He held his own laser scalpel to one, and beamed into it. The light deflected. 'They got some kind of shielding on them, like those walls.'

'How come some of them are different colours?' Felicia said. She gingerly picked one up. In contrast to the egg Vormaz palmed, this one resembled a dull charcoal lump.

'That means the shielding is gone.' Theresa shuffled nervously on the spot. 'Be careful handling them. We don't know why they're shielded. They could be weapons or something.'

Felicia immediately placed hers back on the shrine and backed away. She wiped her hands on her apparel.

An hour of exploring the antechambers and main expanse yielded nothing. Some tunnels curved off into bottomless drops. Sunken parts of what could have been buildings lay within collapsed rock, unreachable by foot. Small broken pieces here and there were collected. It appeared as though nothing had been in these parts for centuries. There were no bodies, no bones, no signs of technology; just the Auronium, the murals and the eggs.

They made their way back through the catacombs, through the twisting network of pathways. It took twenty minutes before they emerged outside into hazardous landscape. The surveyors navigated carefully around the dirt-brown rocks and plateaus. Their ship parked at the top of an overhanging plateau. Theresa tapped into the comms again.

'Fran. Franny boy. Fraaaaaan?'

No reply. Felicia held onto Clive's hand as he lifted her to a ledge. Vormaz manoeuvred across jagged slabs, joining Felicia as she ventured higher up.

The comm sputtered. 'Reese?'

'We're out!' She reached for Clive's hand and grunted as he hauled her up. 'And, uh, we're just clambering over there now. Open the hatch, please.' She rubbed her wrist, frowning at the red bruising peppering the skin. 'Uh Clive, grip harder couldn't you?'

He shrugged in apology.

A crackle of inhaled air hit her ears from the link. 'Nice. See you guys, then!'

Theresa cut off the link. She fingered the Auronium egg in her left rucksack pocket. These treasures, she thought. Such rare treasures...

They'd taken them all, including the non-shielded after a bit of deliberation. Considering each egg could very well rack up an eight figure sum without a hitch, the vote was unanimous. The data they sent to Fran got no confirmation back on whether or not they were explosives. The chemicals the eggs were constructed from were so minute, the shielding so alien, that even the superior data banks and techs pulled nothing.

Sweat beaded her forehead as she steered past a patch of lethal-looking rock. 'I swear it was easier going down...' she muttered. Clive shot her a grin, touching the stubble on his chin.

'Always is,' he agreed. 'But at least this time, we got something to show for our efforts. Credit, prestige, probably some welcoming crowds back home...'

A screech caused both of them to jerk their heads. Felicia, limbs flailing and hair flying, thudded heavily down a seven-foot crevice. The sound of bone snapping and cartilage tearing made Theresa wince. Vormaz jumped over to the slip and skidded down. Felicia whimpered in pain.

'You need help?' Theresa called, anxiously hovering. Vormaz waved off the offer. 'It's fine!' He turned his attention to the fallen redhead. 'Can you get up, Felice?'

'I can-' Felicia's voice cut off in a choked gasp. Gas, orange and yellow and red billowed out of her rucksack. Vormaz cursed. He roughly dragged Felicia upright. Theresa watched, fascinated as the gas coalesed into a perfect orb, a miniature sun.

Five seconds later she ran, all thoughts of scientific curiousity flushed out of her mind.

The miniature sun simmered with hunger. Whatever it was, it happened to be destructive to environment, to human molecules.

Vormaz and Felicia. One second they were there, desperately struggling to get out of range. The next, the... whatever it was, touched them, breaking their substances apart like flowing water, turning them the same ugly colours as their killer.

The orb consumed everything it touched. No particle was spared. And it wouldn't stop growing.

She scrabbled up ledges, muscles shrieking, feeling the weight of her backpack; feeling the weight of the two eggs nestled inside. She reached for the clasps, thought better and continued her frantic journey back to the ship.

She slammed against the hatch and with a supreme force of will, hauled herself up. She collapsed in a heap. She crawled up the slope. Turned to see if Clive followed...

She only saw the gas-ball expanding, yawning over the land like a bulbous wart. What of Clive? He was next to her. He ran. Surely he...

The hatch neatly raised, concealing her view as engines coughed and whined into life. The ship boosters kicked into action. The weight in the pit of her stomach squelched to her feet with initial acceleration. Everything rattled. Only when the gravity normalised and the rattling stopped as they drifted in space, did she move. Her brain felt mired in mud. Her limbs leaden.

Everyone was gone.

She made her way numbly to the flight deck. The door hissed open. Fran tilted his head around. His hands busied themselves over the controls. The huge screen monitors showed the planet. One of the three continents appeared to have a huge boil tainting the surface. The gas hit the ozone layer, puffing out at faster and faster velocities. The rate of expansion was astounding; marvellous to the casual observer.

'What the hell, Reese?' Fran croaked. 'What the hell is that?' He jerked his arm to the screen.

Theresa sat down. She took deep ragged breaths, and eased the rucksack off her shoulders. She gently placed it on the deck. She stared at the screen with morbid contemplation. 'One moment we were climbing, just heading back...' Her voice began to crack, 'Then Felicia fell. And...'

Fran's expression of disbelief and fear mirrored a fraction of how she felt. 'I'm sorry, 'Reese. I had to get the ship out of there. I couldn't wait...''

'I know.' Theresa rubbed her eyes. 'They...it didn't matter anyway.' Both of them lapsed into silence.

Nothing of the original planet remained. The gaseous substance engorged itself on every last square inch, corroded billions of years of potential history in an insulting amount of time, and did so as easily as stepping on a small bug. The rate of growth slowed to a tight halt. Cracks appeared all around the sphere, black and red and pulsing veins. It contracted, wavered...

Her bubbling feelings of grief hammered at the scraps of control she mustered. Theresa bit her lip, trying to rein in the confusion. They died so fast... The confusion gained another layer. What's happening to the planet?

'It's like...' Fran whispered, awed. 'It's like terraforming. No. Is it?'

'Terraforming,' Theresa mumbled. 'Maybe.' The image of the sculptured nest containing the eggs popped to mind. The pattern of the fresco, suns and explosions of colour. The eggs heaped up, protected by their obscure shields. Realisation crept into her bones. 'Maybe not.'

'What?' Fran raised an eyebrow.

'I think..that's a whole planet forming down there. A brand new one.'

Fran stared at her. 'But that can't be. It's impossible.'

Theresa bit harder, drawing blood. Her gaze flickered between the rucksack and the impossible thing.

The two eggs she scooped had slowed her down on the run. But she'd escaped. Survived. She floated in space, witnessing a miracle at the cost of a mistake and four lives. The main comconsole whirred with information, confirming the gas composition: the primordial soup of planets.

The impossible thing was in fact possible. Aeons condensed into minutes. Already the surface appeared to be cooling; hardening.

The University wouldn't be pleased to hear what happened. Technicalities made her responsible for the unlawful destruction of a territorial planet. The second she returned home, she'd be up for execution.

But one glimpse of the Auronium eggs and all could be forgiven, she hoped. To have the technology to create planets at a simple crack; many would die for such power.

Spider-thin webs of possibilities flooded her brain. Perhaps she needn't return home after all. Perhaps she could disappear into the expanse space offered.

Theresa pulled the rucksack closer and cradled it. Perhaps she had no choice at all.

Fran flinched from her expression. 'Therese?'

She gulped in her despair. 'Fran... here's what we need to do.'



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Theme: Birth
Picture Prompt by Salvatore Dali: 3