“That’s it. Now, see that dial over there? The large round one?” Irie directed him to where there were three such dials with needles jumping back and forth.
“Er…” El said.
“The top one,” Irie said. “When that needle touches seven, I want you to push that big blue lever back up again, right? We’ll inject some more go-juice into the core, and that will give you a sustained reaction, and a faster rocket burn. Okay?”
“Right-o, Engineer.” El kept his eyes on the needle, and watched as it slowly jumped and danced, climbing up past four, then five…
“And while I have you here, Captain…” Irie said, wiping her hands as she started to pack away her things.
Six… Seven! El did as he had been told and shoved the blue lever back up to its original position, and in return, he felt a deep tremor surge through the body of the Mercury. He couldn’t be sure, but he could swear that he could almost feel the boat moving faster already.
“Yeah, what?”
“What sort of away mission are we talking? Quiet and casual? Or do I need to bring Babe Ruth over there?” Irie pointed to the other corner of the room, which was almost entirely dominated by the seated form of a massive mech-warrior, its arms lying helpless and pathetic on the floor, the reinforced cage of its head empty apart from the seat and controls.
“Oh, right…” El swallowed nervously as he always did upon being reminded that they had this piece of hardware stashed in the belly of his Mercury. Mech-warriors were famously temperamental machines to run. They had to have super-powered generators on board in order to make them effective fighting or loading machines, and that usually meant that they were also prone to sudden, devastating explosions.
But Irie came with Babe, El thought. The pair of them were a two-part deal. He couldn’t hire Irie without her demanding to have a space to also work on her pet project. El thought that she had said something about Babe Ruth being an heirloom or something, which didn’t particularly fill him with confidence—the idea that this volatile deathtrap was also aging and falling to bits in his hold as well.
“No. Quiet and casual, for sure.” El nodded enthusiastically. “I don’t want any trouble. Remember the Gleeson Nebula Job?”
Ah crap, El realized that he had said exactly the wrong thing.
“Ah yes, El. I remember the Gleeson Nebula Job.” Irie crossed her arms. “The one that you said was a quick walk in, charm the stripes off them because they were so stupid, and walk out with all of their loot?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Look, Irie… Let the past be the past, huh?” El started to back away from the engine room. I should know better than to even come down here. Irie, even though I employ her, treats it like her personal castle…
“Let the past be the past! You got me bleeding married to a Gleesonian! I have a gas-miner constantly sending private detectives out to find me!” Irie exploded. She did not look like the sort of woman who wanted to be married to a Gleesonian gas-miner.
“Yeah, well, we’ll be making moonfall in a bit, and I need both of you with me, so…” El disappeared back down the corridor at a run. By the time that he arrived in the main hold, the little red smudge that they had been racing toward was now the large, domineering form of the sand-world Tritho Prime, with a large, sandy-grey moon moving slowly in front of it.
“We’re here,” Val growled.
4
Tritho
“Systems down to silent, full security locks enabled,” El stated as the Mercury Blade dusted down onto the moon of Tritho Prime. Just minutes before, and the ship had burnt its way through the thin envelope of gases that clung to the satellite. El was always surprised at that—how even asteroids, given enough mass and density, could accumulate a bit of an atmosphere.
Not that Tritho looks at all inviting, he thought as the yellowish sand hung in the air in slow motion before slowly falling to the ground.
“Gravity reading?” he called.
“Zero-point-six human normal,” Irie called from the other side of the cockpit. She had automated all the engine controls and was helping El on the landing protocols. With a wobbly ‘thunk,’ the four landing legs touched down, and the roar of the boosters cut off suddenly, leaving them in silence.
“Okay then, ladies and gents,” El called, flicking the last of the security protocols and putting the Mercury into as quiet a systems mode as possible. Her transponder was still giving out the customary pings, but it was coded to the arm-guard that each of the three crew members wore, meaning that it wouldn’t be detected by passing scanner sweeps from inquiring patrol vessels.
“We’re outside of Coalition Space, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be eager to get here,” El confirmed as his boots hit the main hold.
“That’s why I’ll be bringing the Judge.” Val affectionately patted the heavy, general-purpose ion rifle that looked like a personal anti-tank weapon.
“I didn’t say start an interstellar incident.” El rolled his eyes, his hands hovering for a moment over the pulse rifle, but going for the blaster pistol instead. He had his blade at his side, and he wanted the freedom to move should he need to. For Irie, she took one of the pulse rifles, before completing a perfunctory lock-and-load with a satisfied smile.
“Full recovery packs.” El handed out the solid-case backpacks to both of them, before slipping one on himself. They had within them filament rope, grappling hooks, collapsible digging equipment, micro charges, and small rocket stabilizers to bring up heavier items. “We have no idea what it is we’ll be gathering, so keep your eyes out for anything that looks worth a credit or two. Anything old,” he clarified.
“Right. Anything old in an archaeology dig.” Irie snickered, but El knew that she would understand what he meant. Valyien technology was as rare as finding an Earth-like habitable planet in the galaxy—rarer, in fact, as the Valyiens had only been one intelligent race in an entire galaxy.
But they had been the most important one, El thought with a fierce grin. Everyone knew the stories about them—that they had left their tech halfway across all of known space. An odd set of ruins here, a few fragments there. No one even knew what they had looked like, only that they had traveled these star lanes millennia before humans had even dreamed of reaching their own moon.
Everyone also knew that it was the dead and degraded, strange and multi-dimensional Valyien relics that had given the Coalition its power and were viciously fought over to this day. Each of the human noble houses of the Coalition had risen to prominence thanks to their claiming of some bit of Valyien legacy. The Trevalyn had the Orb, the Archivists had the Tablets, the Marcionne (the same ship-builders who had created the Mercury Blade) had the Fin, and so on. There was a brisk trade in things that might have once been Valyien but were now mangled and jury-rigged into a variety of new shapes, or else were one of the thousands of fakes.
However, despite the frauds and despite the mysteries surrounding this ancient species, the human star-faring civilization known as the Coalition, with all of its outposts and detractors, was built on what had come before. Who knew—maybe the next Valyien find would open up some entirely new inter-galactic industry? Or revolutionize humanity in a way that no one could foresee?
And that is why I have to have it, El thought as he pulled the release for the loading bay doors and felt the sudden heaviness of his encounter-suit as it normalized his weight to adjust for the differences in gravity. He heard the groan of nausea from Irie and Val as their suits performed the same, and they were clomping down the gangplank door and out into the bleached sand…
Walking was easier than normal. So much so, that El and the others could take bounding leaps that covered meters with every step. They leapfrogged over the craggy rocks, skidding onto dusty slopes and hitting the tops of ridges before the captain called them to his side.
“Right. From our orbital scans—” He checked his arm-guard that flashed a little holographic display. “—there is definitely something happening ov
er the next rise. There’s a couple of landers and a small explorer craft, which must be this archaeologist team. I’m hoping to sneak in and avoid them, but if we do come face to face with them, they shouldn’t offer us much trouble…” He said.
“I don’t like it,” Val muttered, his head encased in the shaped helmet attached to his suit, just like the others.
“What?” El frowned at him.
“They are civilians. We Duergar never harm civilians.” The large Gunner leaned the large ion rifle casually against his shoulder.
“The same Duergar that were responsible for the Isar Incursion?” Irie murmured, her words clearly audible over their suit-to-suit communicators. “How many worlds did your people burn again, troll?”
“Don’t call me that.” Val frowned. “And that wasn’t me. That was a long time ago in Duergar history.”
“Right.” Irie kicked at the sand.
“Anyway, look… I didn’t mean go around killing people, for heaven’s sake!” El waved his hands frantically at them. I always forget that you have to be SUPER literal with the Duergar. “I mean that as soon as they see armed people then they’ll give up. I mean, they’re archaeologists, not Armcore marines, right?”
“Whatever you say, boss,” Irie said.
“Good.” Val nodded, hunching by the edge of the rocks.
El carefully raised himself to look over, and promptly swore. “Holy frack.”
“What is it? Trouble?” Irie was the next at his side, before she also paled. “Oh.”
Val growled and joined them to look down on the site.
Neither the captain nor the engineer had been stunned by the archaeologists. Just as the orbital scans of the Mercury had predicted, there sat the two hexagonal landers on their long stilt landing supports, as well as one tubby looking explorer craft displaying the green and orange colors of the Coalition Archaeological Unit. A series of floodlights had been set around the site, looking like stars atop their towers, hanging over the dust.
What El and the others realized right then was that this mission might be a lot bigger than they had first thought. They were staring down into an excavated pit that ended in three metal stairwells that had been placed over downward tunnels. The entire area lit up by scores of floodlights.
But what had drawn their eye was that most of the excavation had revealed a vast stone structure, and it was clear there was more to it underground.. It was made out of terraced hexagonal blocks, looking as ancient as the old pyramids on Earth, and even from this distance, El could make out strange swirls here and there on the nearest of them.
“If that is the edge of something, and there are tunnels going down into it…” El tried to visualize the size of the thing. “It’s fracking massive.”
“You could park a star-freighter in it,” Irie said, impressed. “But it doesn’t look very, you know, technological.”
“Valyien tech doesn’t have to for it to be valuable,” El said ruthlessly. “If we could salvage just one of those blocks there, it might be enough to pay off our debt to the right, stupid collector.”
“Our debt?” Irie asked pointedly.
“Okay, mine then.” El swore again. Each hexagonal block looked about the size of one of the landers below. Too big even for their stabilizers. Ah well. I guess that we’ll just have to go inside to find something a bit more portable. The idea did not worry the captain much. The thought of finding something more valuable, life-changing, history-breaking even, urged him on.
“Come on.” He pushed off from the rise, sailing down the opposing slope in silent bounds.
The trio got to the first tunnel that had been bored into the ziggurat, and reinforced by the metal stairs that the archaeologists had put in. El took the lead, and he didn’t have to tell the rest of them to follow quietly as they descended fast, Val lumbering next, with Irie at the back. The captain was feeling almost buoyant by the time he made the first landing. He turned the corner once again as suddenly, the cavern under the ground opened beneath them.
“Holy….” El paused.
It was massive. It literally was the size of a star-port, with one half given over to the strange Valyien ziggurat, and the other to the dark pit. The stairs they were on continued down to the nearest blocks of the ruins, where well-lit tunnels had either been revealed or drilled into the surface of the pyramid.
But it wasn’t just the size of the place, it was also the fact that they weren’t alone down there. There were distant insect-sized figures of people working over the ruins, wearing bulky black and blue uniforms, and a few of them were even in the heavy shoulder pads and breastplates of exo-armour.
“Is this whole fracking moon hollow?” Irie said distractedly as she joined them, before seeing the people. “Oh crap. Those don’t look like archaeologists to me.”
“What gave it away? The fact that they’re carrying rifles?” El grimaced. “We’re going to have to play this super-close.”
“Play? Are you mad? That’s the blue and black of Armcore down there,” Irie hissed, crouching beside Val. “We got here too late. We’ll just have to chalk this one up to experience and try another job.”
“Sst!” El hissed through his teeth in frustration. It would be the sensible thing to do, to cut his losses and look for another way to make up twenty thousand credits, plus the food and fuel costs… But just one little bit of Valyien tech would make all of our troubles go away… “Sorry, Irie.” He nodded at his gunner, who just grunted that the danger didn’t bother him. Nothing bothered Val Pathok.
“They’re nowhere near this tunnel here, see? They’re all over the other side of the pyramid-thing. And we’ve got our scanners. As soon as they pick up movement, then we can get out, right?” El pointed to the nearest tunnel entrance. “We split up once we get in there, cover more ground in less time. Val, you go with Irie. I’ll go on my own.”
“Darn right you’ll go on your own, I’m not getting my ass shot off saving you…” Irie was muttering, but El noticed that she still followed him when they ran, at a crouch, down the metal gantry to the nearest tunnel.
Immediately, they were in a well-lit and cool environment. The tunnels didn’t look to have been freshly carved, El thought. They were too exact, perfect cubes of rock, with walls that showed no joints or seams of the blockwork beneath. A series of lights had been laid at the intersections of the tunnels, one of which was directly ahead of them in a tee-junction.
“Left or right?” El asked. Irie chose right, so that left El the left-side path. “And remember—grab what you can. Anything Valyien! No matter how large or small!” he whispered, earning a casual wave from his engineer.
“Wonderful,” the captain muttered. “And here I was thinking they would be happy they were about to become rich…”
The tunnel curved at a gentle rate for some way, with no clear markings on the floor or walls. What could this place have been? the captain thought. Had the Valyien lived here? There was an archway on the left side, which El slid across, raising his blaster pistol as he turned to see what it contained.
Nothing. Just a bare stone room, with no technology, no relics, nothing apart from…
“What is that?” El stepped a little closer in, looking at the opposing wall. There were strange swirls, curves, and geometric lines across the wall, stretching from corner to corner. They looked like carvings, but when El brought up the small light attached to his blaster, he could see that they glittered like crystal. “Almost like they are veins of rock, not carvings…” El thought, before shaking his head at the strangeness of it.
He ran his hand along the wall—the joint between crystal seam and wall was smooth. There was nothing here he could sell.
“Drat!” El moved to the next archway in this corridor, to see that it was exactly the same setup—strange curves and swirls on the walls, but with absolutely nothing else in the room whatsoever. “What did they do, just stand in these rooms and stare at the pretty pictures?” El shook his head. This wasn’t getti
ng him rich.
The tunnel branched into two directions. El checked his arm-guard to make sure that it was building a small map of his surroundings as it went (it was) and so chose the left once again. The tunnel surprised him by starting to slope downward.
It also surprised him when he heard a sudden voice unexpectedly behind him, saying, “Freeze!”
Elsewhere in the ruined pyramid, Irie and Val were trudging down one tunnel to the next, finding the same strangely carved rooms, but then also finding a larger archway that opened into a wider hall, whose roof was held up by octagonal stone pillars, made of the same stuff as the walls.
“Whoa,” Irie said as she peered inside. This room wasn’t lit by the strip lights. “Armcore mustn’t have been through here,” she whispered. “Which is a good sign for us, right?”
Val swung his ion rifle and its mounted light over the inside of the hall, where the shadows of the pillars were cast in wild disarray. The floor was different than the rest of the room. It was a mosaic of slightly iridescent rock, like mother-of-pearl, but each ‘plate’ was a different shape.
“Beautiful…” the Duergar whispered, surprising Irie. She had never known him to show any interest or passion for anything but his cat.
“After you,” Irie said sarcastically, and the Duergar, crouching, slipped into the hall with a stealth that belied his massive frame.
Bwarp! Not stealthy enough, however, as there was a beep from the darkness and a tiny red light turned itself off.
“Oh, frack. What’s that?” Irie swung her rifle just in time to see the approaching singular, predatorial light of a hunter drone. “Don’t move!” she whispered just in time.
Hunter drones looked like shark’s heads, Irie thought, just without the face and teeth. Instead, they had a singular red light on their ‘nose’ and underneath were three dark weapons ports from which micro-missiles would be fired with deadly accuracy. They were also one of the security drones of choice for Armcore.
Valyien Boxed Set 1 Page 3