THE VROL TRILOGY (5 page)

Half-way between the Moon and Earth he
programmed his re-entry angle vector and paid careful attention to
his early warning systems for any sort of defensive satellites and
ground-based systems, detecting none. In fact, there were no radio
signals at all - just static on all frequencies. That told him one
of two things - either that humanity was extinct, or that they had
completely lost all technological capabilities. He took no chances
and prepared for both scenarios. Another oddity he noticed was that
there were incredible amounts of space junk that formed a sparse,
inconsistent ring around the plant. Feeling he had little time to
analyze these foreign objects, he blasted through them as he made
his way towards the planet below.

The Machu Picchu screamed into Earth's
atmosphere at a faster rate than any previously-known vessel ever
had before, simply due to the fact that technology had advanced so
much throughout the centuries.  He made an effort to slow down
as much as possible, remembering that there were untold numbers of
flying species on Earth, and he had no desire to massacre scores of
innocent, airborne animals on re-entry.

He slowed the Machu Picchu down to a
respectable Mach 1.5 over what his nav charts called the Pacific
Ocean, cruising at about 9,000 meters above sea level. As he was
coming in high, he turned on his ground cams and recorded while he
approached the Peruvian coast, specifically over what was the
capital city, Lima. Curious, he slowed his ship down, as the
computers had not detected any form of areal defense, and lowered
to only 75 meters above sea level on the coast.

As he approached the foggy
shoreline, he saw the ruins of what appeared to have been a large
commercial center, built on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
Magnifying in, he saw there was still lettering on buildings,
although quite faded. The largest lettering said
Larco Mar
, and showed
well only because it was constructed out of what appeared to be
concrete or stone, but some of the smaller buildings had signage,
like
HaRo k C fé
,
with some letters missing.

Lidar (laser radar) systems detected no
large fauna in the area, so he dropped his landing gear and set
down on a street outside of the commercial area. The atmospheric
drive's concussion waves buffeted the street and blew out chunks of
pavement as the ship touched down, the landing pads sinking a few
centimeters into the pavement.

Max was amazed that the street had even
held together on landing, as it was most probably not designed to
withstand so many metric tons of weight in such a small area.
Shutting down engines, but leaving primers on in case of an urgent
departure, he unstrapped from his chair and did a final readout of
air conditions outside. He was surprised that they were fine, with
just a touch more pollen in the air than he would have expected
given it was winter, but then again, what was to expect? He was
from Azul, not Earth.

He then pressed a button on the control
panel in front of his seat and five small drones shot out of an
access tube on the starboard side of the ship and split off at high
speed in different directions. These were to scan the area and send
findings back to the Machu Picchu's computer systems, warning him
of any organic, technological or biological dangers that
existed.

The rear cargo doors opened and the
loading ramp slowly lowered to the ground, holding firm onto the
street as it made contact with a loud thud. Max took a supplemental
oxygen supply, water and some nourishment snacks, as well as a
charged side arm with him in a back pack, then slid down the stairs
from the cockpit to the cargo bay and jumped into the quad runner,
putting on his helmet and hitting the energy switch.

He blew out of the back of the Machu
Picchu, the landing ramp and cargo doors closing once he had left
the ship as he headed down into what appeared to have been a
parking structure for land vehicles. He could tell, even though he
was from another planet, that humans still built things the same
way. Rooms were constructed with four or more walls, doors were 2.1
meters high and people still sat down to relieve themselves in
lavatory facilities. Much had changed over time, but much had
remained the same.

Once he entered the lower
sections of the parking structure he started to see more signs of a
former civilization - dust-covered, rusted-out hunks of land-based
vehicles were in apparent
parking
spaces
, denoted by faded lines in the
pavement, and had obviously not moved for centuries.

What happened here?

He drove up and out of the parking
structure, stopping his quad at a stairway, which led up to the
buildings of Larco Mar. Exiting his quad, he drew his side arm, a
military standard issue Stinger rapid fire charge pistol capable of
expelling 37 charged rounds per second with little recoil nor
bloom, from a charge pod that contained the equivalent of 37,000
rounds. Technology had also improved firearms in the future, and
this weapon was not to be trifled with.

As Max slowly walked up the stairs he
relied on a head's up display, or HUD, which was imagery painted
onto his eye by a laser, basically giving him the illusion of
having a semi-transparent, one-meter display in front of his face,
up high and to the left. This was facilitated by his helmet's
connection with the Machu Picchu, and it showed him everything from
temperature to wind direction, to bacterial, viral and pollen
counts, among many, many other details. As he neared the top of the
stairs he surmised that it used to be an area of commerce, so,
wanting a bit more information, he consulted the computer on the
Machu Picchu.

Using his verbal interface with the
ship he said, "Computer, please do a historical analysis of the
local area based on my precise coordinates, with a one kilometer
radius. This month and day, for the year 2014 CE."

He waited for a moment and suddenly a
torrent of information flooded his HUD. He instantly regretted not
having done a detailed search while still in the ship, as this way
the information was basically being pushed into his brain in a most
uncomfortable fashion. However, once the upload was complete the
HUD overlaid video footage of what Larco Mar looked like in the
year 2014, matching every step he took. The video overlay was a
compilation of triangulated satellite surveillance and street
camera archives, taken to Azul with the Exodus fleet centuries
ago.

People were walking - families,
couples, teenage kids on skateboards, and kites fluttering in the
gentle breezes off the coast. It was a lively scene, with the sun
shining and sparkling off the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Music
played in restaurants; he smelled scents of the most delicious
cuisines, saw performers on sidewalks and vendors selling trinkets
from large portable booths.

Ah, so this is what Earth
was like here
, he thought to
himself.
Not so different from Azul, and I
actually like the style of clothing
, he
thought further as he chuckled out loud, being especially fond of
the various women in bikini-style swimwear.

Desiring some sort of real connection
with the dead world, he entered the HaRo k C fé, which the HUD
showed correctly as Hard Rock Café. Walking through the
dust-covered seating areas, he sauntered up to the bar area and
tested a stool, just to make sure it wouldn't disintegrate on
him.

The bar stool held fast, so he sat at
the counter, watching the endless imagery of servants, guests, and
food going in different directions. For the most part the
restaurant was intact. There were dust-covered display cases on the
walls and even bottles of spirits behind the bar. That's when he
got an idea. He got up, turned off his video review function on the
HUD and went behind the bar.

Max found a few bottles in a cupboard
that still had seals, so he selected one - a bottle of Glenfiddich
Scotch whisky, 18 years old.

Much, much older than that,
I would assume
, he mused.

He knew that Scotch whisky was aged in
the barrel, not the bottle, so this particular distilling had
rested in a barrel for 18 years, and then sat on a shelf for decade
after long decade.  As he put the bottle in his backpack, he
determined that there was nothing more to see inside, so he
released three more small drones from his pack that promptly zipped
off to scan the perimeter.

Max pulled a small computer
out of his backpack, set it on the bar top, and touched a button,
making a holographic display rise up in the place of where the
screen of a 21
^st
century
earth laptop's would have been. He tapped at the keyboard and
checked on his drones. All reported no human life, and no high
levels of radioactivity. However, there was a red marker on a
biological reading - a fossilized form of an unknown type of
amoeba, and it had permeated everything, including the water
supply. He instructed a drone to gather samples of the amoeba and
to contain them in a hydrostatic field, for return to the ship and
further analysis. He called all other drones back to the ship and
set off to return to the Machu Picchu.

As he walked back out onto the
promenade, he came up to the entrance of a clothing shop and again
turned on his HUD video feed. It showed attractive signage and
brilliantly colored clothing and fabrics on the walls, but in
reality there were only smatterings of dust on the ground below
where the clothing used to hang so many centuries ago. His HUD
showed glass doors and windows everywhere, but these buildings were
so old that the glass had been eliminated via the sun, rain and
wind - cruel companions for the duration of history, to say the
least. He reckoned being right on the coastline would have also
made it difficult for man-made materials to remain over the
centuries.

Again, turning off the video overlay on
his HUD, Max made his way back to the quad, taking care to not fall
into any deep potholes, and then jumped into the vehicle and darted
over to his ship.

Back in the cockpit, while eating a
roast beef sandwich he had retrieved from the galley, he let the
computer do a detailed molecular analysis on the amoeba fossils
discovered by the drones. Then, flipping a few switches, he powered
on all systems and prepared for takeoff to his target location,
minutes away on the other side of the Andes - the mythical Machu
Picchu, after which he named his ship. He was certain that
Federation forces would arrive within a day or two, perhaps a
little longer, as he left out small details of SSCC hook drive
installation protocols on purpose, hopeful that they would hit a
couple of roadblocks in retrofitting a craft. He was well aware
that it would only slow them down as there were plenty of
scientists at the Military Complex who were almost as intelligent
as him.

He started the atmospheric drive and
lifted up and over the commercial area, then out to the nearby
ocean and back down to sea level, where a keyboard command dropped
two long lengths of tubing into the ocean. This enabled him to add
to his already ample stash of deuterium fuel, upon which his ship's
fusion-ion drive relied. Minutes later, after having extracted
enough fuel, he made a slow ascent to 1000 meters, then gained
speed southeast-bound at an upward angle of 35 degrees. In minutes
he was over the Urubamba River and Machu Picchu.

Scanning the view with his cameras, he
found it incredible that Machu Picchu withstood the elements so
well over the centuries, even though it was made of eloquently
stacked stones. Of course, it looked quite different from the
imagery in historical documentation, as it was now completely
covered in lush vegetation.

Lidar scans took care of that and
returned pictures of the tiny dwelling units sans plant life. Max
needed a place to land and to hide his ship, fearing that the
Federation could arrive any day. He started scanning for any type
of cave or natural entrance underneath the jungle canopy and soon
found a perfect hiding place for his ship. There was a natural cave
entrance alongside the river, surrounded by overgrown vegetation,
and it was just big enough to fit his craft. He brought the Machu
Picchu down on the lowest booster setting he could, not wanting to
disturb the flora, and slid his ship into a naturally-occurring
tunnel of trees and plants. He was not concerned about being
discovered once he was well-hidden, as all locator beacons on the
Machu Picchu were disabled once he purchased it. There were minimal
tracking abilities on the ship anyway, as it had been sometimes
used for smuggling contraband around Azul.

He shut off critical systems and only
left on basic life support - air filtration, computer systems and
emergency lighting at night, so there was no way he would be
discovered. What he really wanted to do was to camp outside, under
a different set of stars; alien in configuration to the stars he
had seen his entire life. He grabbed his gear and opened the rear
hatch of the ship, setting off for the edge of the entrance to his
tunnel, where he set up a tent and built a fire pit the old
fashioned way - with a shovel. He had camped out on Azul many times
as a youth, and he found this to be a fun and relaxing
activity.

Max finished his campsite by the time
dusk had arrived and had the ship's computer set to detect anything
entering the atmosphere so there would be ample time to extinguish
the campfire and get ready to flee. No one had yet developed a way
to track a craft in side space, so he basically could have gone
anywhere, and still had that option in case of being pursued by the
Federation - pick a current and go. Manually set sensors formed a
perimeter around the campsite, all the way back to the ship. They
would sound a warning upon detecting any intrusion, such as a
carnivorous animal, and give it a healthy electrical shock and
grav-push away from the area, effectively keeping him safe from any
natural dangers.