A few meters from the forest, he came across a body. It was probably human, although it was burned so badly that Viekko had some doubts. The face was an incomprehensible mess of charred flesh and the hands and feet were burned all the way to the bone. The body was oddly proportioned as well. The legs and arms were longer than a typical human, the torso was slim and the head appeared more oblong. It was as if the entire body was put on a rack and pulled longer like a piece of clay. The only clothing was a pelt of animal skin as badly burned as its owner.
Viekko knelt down and held his hand over the body. Heat radiated off of it and the skin crackled as it split. Whatever happened here happened only a few hours ago. A large plume of smoke from some still-smoldering inferno a couple hundred meters away supported that idea.
He swallowed hard. They had caused this. Just by coming here, maybe just by landing on the planet, they caused this to happen. Viekko didn’t know how, but he knew it was true.
He turned back toward the forest where Althea, Isra and Cronus were themselves coming to grips with what they were seeing. There were other bodies scattered around that patch of asphalt all as badly burned, if not worse, than the one at Viekko’s feet.
Oddly, Viekko didn’t feel much of anything. Maybe it was the drugs or maybe it was a defense mechanism born out of a lifetime of horrific sights. But Viekko wondered if he was preparing himself for a string of human atrocities that would be worse than this.
In the distance, just beyond the largest plume of smoke, there was a grandiose building that stretched across the entire length of the tarmac. It gleamed white and curved inward, encompassing a fraction of it within a crescent.
Isra took a step forward and nodded in the distance, “We should check out that building. Survivors, if there are any still around, would have likely sought shelter there.”
Isra led the way and Viekko grudgingly followed.
Civilization had arrived, and Titan would burn before it retreated again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ultimately, the secrets of The Fall may forever lie with the dead. But, if we listen close, we can still hear their voices echoing through the centuries.
-from The Fall: The Decline and Failure of 21st Century Civilization by Martin Raffe.
It was a massacre. It was genocide in its cruelest, most horrific form. The few randomly scattered bodies like the one at Viekko’s feet were just the start. The real horror was clustered around the largest plume of smoke in between the crescent-shaped building and the tree line. Hundreds of bodies smoldered there in a pile of charred flesh and bone.
There was a Spartan simplicity about these people that somehow made their slaughter worse. Those with clothing intact wore long lengths of fur in the form of cloaks or dresses belted around their narrow frames. The men looked as if they let their hair and beards grow their entire lives without so much as a comb to pull through it. The women, by contrast, hacked their tangled, matted hair off at the shoulder. The only marks of vanity or luxury were bowl-shaped fur hats and leather straps or belts. Their entire culture, as seen from their remains, was one of harsh utility, a means of survival against the elements.
When the group was only a couple hundred meters away from the pile of bodies, Cronus fell to his knees, moved his breather to the side and gagged, “I… feel… I’ve never… I’ve seen the words and heard the voices of human cruelty. But I’ve never seen so much of it so… clearly.”
Althea knelt down, helped him take his mask off and held it over his nose. “Deep breath, Cronus. It’s okay. Be sick if you need to.”
Isra, on the other hand, was strangely compelled toward wretched horrors. She approached the edge walking carefully as if not to step in anything or anyone. She knelt down. “Viekko take a look at this.”
Viekko knelt down beside her. It was a woman, or at least the half-burned skeleton seemed vaguely shaped like a woman. Her hands clutched what looked to be the remains of a shallow woven basket. She held it up to her face as if trying to use it to shield herself from the terrible forces that did this.
“I think she was carrying a basket of fruit,” said Isra, noting some of the native foods scattered around the area where the woman fell.
Near the woman, Viekko saw a man carrying a makeshift wooden torch burned down to the stick. There were similar torches scattered among the bodies including more food, musical instruments, and wooden figurines carved in rough animal shapes.
Viekko stood back. “Looks like one hell of a party.”
Isra closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, “Yes. But what happened? Who… what could do this?”
Viekko tilted his hat back. “I would venture that there was some kind of gatherin’ and somebody went and played crowd control with a flamethrower. Whoever did it didn’t leave much of a trace though. It’s all just fire and death.”
Isra tensed, “Are we safe here?”
The Martian surveyed the area, “Nothing movin’ anymore. Looks to be whatever done the killin’ finished the deed and left. Ain't nothing out there but a stack of corpses. But they couldn’t have got far, that pile’s still smokin’.”
Althea helped Cronus to his feet. Cronus's tissue-paper-like skin was even paler than before and his breath came in short, erratic bursts, but he could stand and walk for now.
Isra watched the sprawling building looming less than a hundred meters away. “I don’t like this.”
“Can’t say I’m giddy about the prospect myself,” said Viekko. “Still feel like makin’ for that building there?”
Isra said nothing, and just gave him a single solemn nod.
Viekko unholstered both his guns and handed one to Isra. “I'll take point. Isra, watch our path back to the camp. If we get ourselves surrounded, we’re cooked… literally. Althea, Cronus, stay close. And if I say ‘run’ you haul it as fast as you can for cover. Understand?”
He started to lead the way toward the white building and felt a wave of dizziness run over him. He stumbled forward and, for a moment, had that far-away, uneasy feeling that he would get when the Haze took hold. At least it was probably only a moment. Could have been an hour as far as Viekko was concerned.
Althea touched his arm. “Viekko are you okay?”
He looked at Althea and then at Cronus who was staying close to her side. The idea that he might fail them both sent waves of terror running through his mind which turned into shame which morphed into anger.
He tried to will his mind back, make it sharper through sheer stubbornness. He snapped, “I’m fine. Just…I think the smell is gettin’ to me. Let’s go.”
The space in between the worse of the massacre and the white building was empty. That meant that the culprits came from this direction and drove the people toward the forest. His grip on his pistol tightened as he scanned the dirty windows for any sign of life but nothing moved.
Viekko flashed on something the preacher used to recite back home on the Meridani Colony on Mars. He always said it when it came time to bury someone. He could almost hear the holy man’s voice in his head, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…for you are with me…something…something.”
“Did you say something?” said Althea. She was still walking beside him with a look of concern that irritated every nerve that wasn’t numbed by withdrawals.
“Nothin’,” said Viekko, “Just divine protection.”
“There is no divinity here,” said Cronus watching the sky as he walked, “No protection, no safety, no limits. Only people. Animals. Free to do as they will with no chance of retribution.”
Viekko tightened his grip on his gun, “Cronus, this place is creepy enough as it is. Don’t go losin’ your head and makin’ it worse.”
He quickened his steps and left Althea a few paces behind him. It didn’t matter. Whether he was standing over the body of a fallen comrade on Mars or trudging through the burned-out remains on his hell, there was no Earth god that gave a galt baas about what happened on other
planets.
Viekko stopped walking and shook his head to try and clear it. His mind was wandering. The Haze was setting in faster and harder than it ever had in the past. Whatever Althea had given him was causing him to crash hard.
Althea caught up and put her hand on his arm again. “Viekko, are you sure you’re all right?”
Cronus, tailing at Viekko’s heel, was still fixated on the sky when he murmured, “They came from above. They had to. We will never escape them here.”
Viekko brushed Althea’s hand away. “How about instead of worryin’ about me, you calm that kid the khayakh down? Can’t focus with him yammerin’ on like that.”
Viekko quickened his pace but Althea and Cronus kept right behind him, “Cronus is acting exactly as one should given the circumstances. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Some motion, some smell back toward the trees caught Viekko’s attention. Taking up the rear of the formation, Isra raised her gun, “What is it Viekko? What do you see?”
Viekko sniffed. He must be imagining things, there was no way he could smell anything over the metallic, charcoal scent of burning flesh. The Haze was getting to him.
He turned back around, “Nothin’. Come on. Best we keep movin’”
A few minutes later, the crescent building loomed large in front of them. It wasn’t as white as it appeared from a distance; the paint was tarnished, dirty and it had flaked off in several places revealing a dull, grey metal. The windows that stood from the floor to the ceiling were so filthy as to be nearly opaque.
Isra and Viekko rushed toward a sliding metal door. She stood off to the side holding one of his handguns at ready while he put his ear to it for a moment and, hearing nothing, tried to open it.
“Novch Gej! Locked. Althea, looks like it’s your show.”
Althea flashed Viekko a look of mild contempt but walked up to the door anyway. She tried pulling on the handle as well and knelt down to examine a keypad next to the door. “The lock and door are both electric. It might not even be secured, it just doesn’t have any power. Cronus, do you have a screwdriver?”
Cronus lurched forward still looking sickly. “I think so.”
As he dropped his backpack to root through it, Althea added, “And a battery. A strong one for preference, but any spare battery will do.”
Cronus cocked his head at the request but continued looking. He produced both items from the recesses of his bag and handed them to Althea.
In one quick motion, she jammed the screwdriver into a space just behind the keypad and levered it out of the socket. It fell and hung suspended by several wires. Althea ran her fingers down the individual metal strands, muttering something to herself before she pulled two away from the keypad.
She held up red and white wires and the battery and looked at Viekko, “When I say go, pull on that handle as hard as you can.”
Viekko grabbed the door and got ready to throw all his weight behind him.
Althea waited a moment, shouted “Now!” and touched the wires to the battery contacts. There was a flash and crack of electricity and Viekko pulled as hard as he could. It barely moved at first but, after a moment, it opened so fast that he nearly fell backwards.
Althea stood and handed the battery and screwdriver back to Cronus. He took them and pulled the breather away for a moment, “Why does a medical doctor know how to spark-boot a lock? It is a subject not routinely covered in medical schools.”
Althea looked away embarrassed, “I wasn’t always a doctor, and we shall leave it at that.”
Viekko checked his gun, “Don’t go bein’ modest, Althea. Why don’t you tell the man about…”
Viekko’s voice trailed off under Althea’s withering glare. Although Cronus had a wide-eyed look of curiosity plastered all over, self-preservation dictated a swift change of subject. “Never mind, keep your eyes movin’ in your head, everyone. Every dark corner, every doorway.”
Viekko entered first with his gun raised but everything inside was still quiet.
Standing at the doorway, Viekko felt as if he were about to step a thousand years back in time. He stared down a carpeted hallway with a dizzying red and blue diamond design that curved around until it disappeared in the distance. This was punctuated on the right by wooden kiosks, rows of uncomfortable chairs, banks of monitors and all the other trappings of what was once a bustling transport hub. Somewhere in Viekko’s mind he could almost hear the dull roar and bustle of the hundreds of travelers from a millennia ago. He could feel his spine tense as if he just walked over the graves of every single one of them.
Isra tucked his other gun into her waistband and walked in behind him. She cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, “Hello! Nin hao! Zdravstvuyte! Hola!” She tried several other variants, pausing briefly between each one, but nobody answered back.
Cronus and Althea followed them into the ancient spaceport and then started down the hallway together. It was all remarkably well-preserved. The windows were cracked and so dirty as to be opaque, the carpet was faded and the fake wood peeled off the kiosks but it all looked like it had been abandoned for years, not centuries. Viekko had seen ruins both on Earth and beyond and they were nothing like this. They always felt like a vague representation of what it used to be. There, he had to close his eyes and imagine what the walls would have looked like still standing or what paint might have been on the walls. What the joint might have looked like when it still had a roof. But this place was pristine, quiet and empty as if the gods themselves lifted it from its own time and dropped it here.
The faint roar of turbines and a breath of air through the vents told Viekko that this place still had some small auxiliary power source, solar or geothermal energy most likely. The air purifiers were still working and scrubbed the thick chemical smog of Titan until it smelled bad in the same way pure, distilled water tasted bad.
As they walked, Isra continued to shout greetings in every language she knew. Viekko wanted to tell her to shut up. There was obviously something on this planet and, judging from the killing field outside, they weren’t much for visitors. Instead Viekko strained his senses through the Haze to pick up the soft patter of feet on carpet or the salty-musk of sweat. Anything to try and detect another soul before it was too late. But there was nothing but that too-clean air and silence.
They all paused near one of the wooden kiosks. It was identical to the others: fake wood with two monitors built into a desk on one side and a golden company logo on the other where travelers would line up. The logo was three initials, TPE, partially enclosed in a circle with a tiny rocket leaving a trail through the letters. Most of the gold had flaked off or was covered in grime but, where it wasn’t, it gleamed in the dim light.
Cronus looked at the logo and cocked his head. “‘TPE’: Transplanetary Energy Corporation. A smaller piece of the whole. A large chunk of what was to be the Corporation. They were a powerful influence on Earth and around Sol before the Fall.”
Isra ran her fingers across the face of two monitors on the other side of the kiosk, “Cronus, can you do anything with these computers?”
Cronus crossed around back, knelt down and opened a set of doors near the bottom of the kiosk. There was an impossible tangled mess but Cronus looked at it all for a moment as if reading a perfect set of instructions. He removed his breath mask, “Possible. Connections are miraculously intact. Fiber to micro-filament to quantum-state servers. There is power, but not enough. I will need time.”
Cronus pulled his pack full of equipment off his back and dove into the wires like it was the only home he’d ever known.
“Viekko, Isra, take a look at this,” said Althea several meters away.
She had wandered farther down the hallway and looked in awe at an indent in the wall near a flight of stairs. Viekko and Isra left Cronus to his work and went to see what Althea was going on about. Someone had painted in very neat black lettering:
Ni faris tion por ni.
Ni faris por la Urbo.
Viekko cocked his head, “Language you recognize, Isra?”
Isra leaned forward and squinted at the words, “No… well yes. It is strange. I see some structure and vocabulary similar to several Earth languages but it is different somehow.”
“A completely new language?” asked Althea.
“Possibly. But there is something familiar about it.”
Viekko stepped close to the words, sniffed and touched one of the letters. The paint left a black smear on his finger. The sight sent a surge of fear through his gut.
“It’s fresh,” he whispered, “A few hours old, if that.”
Something drew his attention and his gaze snapped up the stairs. It was nothing he could sense as much as something instinctual. He took a step back. Every survival instinct in his body wanted to bolt for the door. Both of his hands wrapped around the grip of the gun. They were shaking.
Isra without a trace of fear or anxiety pulled the gun from her waistband and shouted a few more greetings up the stairs but, again, nobody answered. She walked up with Althea close at her heel. Viekko, pushing aside everything he felt, followed.
The stairs went to some kind of lounge area with larger, more comfortable chairs and sofas littered around. One side was entirely made of up glass as dirty as it was downstairs. Isra and Althea both paused at the top to take in the scene. The carpet was replaced with a wood floor that still showed hints of gloss. Viekko found himself compelled toward a door in the glass wall. He walked up, tried the knob, and it opened to the outside.
He walked out onto the roof of the spaceport and stopped near the edge. From here, he could see the paved area in its entirety all the way to the edges where the Titanian forests reclaimed it inch by inch. Isra and Althea joined him to look out over the landscape.
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