Death's Handmaiden

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Put your weapons back in storage,’ Mathias said. ‘We’re going out to the shooting range to see how many of you can hit a target.’ Well, that was likely to be fun.

  ‘That was kind of intense,’ Melissa commented as she stepped up beside Nava.

  ‘Not really,’ Nava replied.

  ‘I don’t think he likes you,’ Rochester added from the other flank.

  ‘I contradicted his firmly held belief that support stream is for people who don’t want to fight. People don’t like their belief systems questioned. I’m reserving judgement on Mathias Statham until I’ve seen whether he has anything to teach.’

  ‘I don’t like him,’ Rochester said.

  ‘There are many things I don’t like, Chess, but if they’re useful they have to be endured.’

  235/5/16.

  It was the end of a theory lesson with the other member of the Mendel clan on the faculty and class 12C were being taken on a field trip. Okay, so it was not actually out in the field, but it was out of the classroom. It was also possible that Lambert was taking them across to one of the postgraduate labs because he was showing off. However, this was their chance to look at a real, newly discovered, honestly mysterious Harbinger artefact. Lambert was supervising the project to analyse it, hence the suggestion of showing off.

  ‘Turns out,’ Rochester said as the class marched over to the laboratory building, ‘that Lambert Stenger is something of an expert on Harbinger artefacts.’

  ‘I thought you knew,’ Melissa said. ‘He’s written a bunch of scientific papers on the subject along with various magazine articles and a book. The Harbingers Demystified. I don’t think it was a best seller, but it’s one of the better books on the subject for the general public.’

  ‘Did it demystify the Harbingers?’ Nava asked.

  ‘Well, not so much. I mean, we know so little about them that all he could really do is explain the most popular theories and suggest which were the most likely to be true.’

  The lab building was white concrete, of course, and seemed to have a lot of corridors in it. Postgrads, mostly in casual clothing, looked askance at the stream of young adults trooping through their domain. There would, probably, have been things said if they were not following along behind Lambert. Another thing Rochester had discovered was that Lambert was one of the senior educators at the school. He had tenure, which technically gave him the right to be called professor, but he had told them to call him ‘mister.’ Nava wondered why he was teaching metaphysics to a bunch of freshmen, but maybe he just liked doing it.

  Laboratory 126 was a room with a lot of equipment in it. Nava had no idea what most of the equipment was or what it did, but there was plenty of it. There were also various things which were probably Harbinger artefacts given that they looked nothing like any of the other equipment in the room. The thing they were here to see was obviously not the only item under investigation. Nava noticed something which looked like it might have been a weapon – it was shaped like a gun though it was all smooth lines and there did not seem to be a trigger – though it could also have been a child’s toy or a hairdryer or something for trimming toenails for all she knew. It appeared as though the Harbingers had built devices on aesthetic grounds as much as for functionality. If the device was a weapon, it was not terribly threatening. Then again, an alien might not find a nine-millimetre pistol threatening if they had no idea what it did.

  However, one of the artefacts was different. It sat in pride of place under a plastic dome in the middle of the room. There was a remote camera on a robotic arm slowly moving over it. Presumably that was recording as much fine detail as possible before anyone got to work on trying to analyse the thing.

  ‘It arrived yesterday,’ Lambert explained as the class gathered around to watch the process and examine the artefact. ‘We are currently taking external measurements and images. Lidar this morning to give us a full, three-D model. The camera is now recording microscopic imagery in the visible spectrum along with near-infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. This is… an absolutely amazing find.’

  Why it was so amazing was not especially clear, though it was different from the other things under study. It was a black box. Not quite a cube, the top surface was about two centimetres smaller in each dimension than the bottom. The base was probably about thirty centimetres on each side and it was roughly thirty centimetres high. Not huge. Yet it gave off the strong impression that you should stay the Hell away from it. Carved into three of the side faces was some sort of image. A figure, humanoid but clearly not human. The fourth face had writing carved into it, though it was not any kind of writing Nava had ever seen before.

  ‘Those are Harbinger glyphs,’ Melissa said, keeping her voice low. ‘No one knows how to read them.’

  ‘And is that what the Harbingers looked like?’ Nava asked, pointing vaguely at one of the figures.

  ‘Probably. There are a few instances of carvings and statues like that on Harbinger sites. Long limbs, long fingers, and a thin body. Fairly big head. The one skull that’s been found suggests that they had around twenty-five percent greater brain capacity than humans, but that doesn’t necessarily make them more intelligent.’

  ‘What makes this artefact different from the others, Mister Lambert Stenger?’ someone asked.

  ‘Ah, that’s a very good question,’ Lambert replied. ‘I’m glad someone other than Rochester Hunt or Melissa Connelly asked it.’

  ‘I was going to,’ Melissa muttered.

  ‘This is the only instance of a functioning Harbinger artefact ever discovered.’

  ‘No way!’ Melissa had, perhaps, not meant to say that quite so loudly, but Lambert did not seem to mind.

  In fact… ‘Very well put, Melissa Connelly. Ha! Yes, that was very much my reaction when I was told about it. I didn’t believe it until it arrived and we did a cursory inspection. Full analysis is yet to be carried out, but this device is emitting quintessential energy in a manner consistent with an active spell.’

  ‘B-but how has it stayed functional all this time? Tens of thousands of years and it’s still operating? That’s…’

  ‘Unprecedented. Unique. Quite marvellous. I have no answer to your question at this time, but I am very much looking forward to finding out and I promise that you’ll all be among the first to hear it. We live in fascinating times, students. This single artefact from a long-lost civilisation may be the key to sorcery we have yet to conceive of.’

  It sounded great, but Nava found herself wondering what kind of magic could be in the thing that it made her want to leave the room.

  ~~~

  ‘It’s all over the news channels,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Finding an artefact like that which is still functioning is very newsworthy.’

  ‘Probably,’ Nava agreed.

  ‘She’s been grumpy since we left the lab,’ Melissa said.

  ‘When have I ever been grumpy?’

  ‘Since we left the lab, obviously.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say she was grumpy,’ Rochester said, his tone thoughtful. ‘Sullen, perhaps.’

  Nava kept her mouth closed aside from to put food in it.

  ‘Well, the fact that the artefact was brought to SAS-squared is a boon for our publicity and a big boost to our reputation,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Mel, would you put down a note to discuss it at the next council meeting? I wonder if Lambert Stenger would agree to a few more class visits.’

  ‘Probably,’ Melissa said. ‘He seemed quite enthusiastic about showing it off to us.’

  ‘Because you’re enthusiastic about the subject,’ Rochester said. ‘Still, I’d imagine he would like to garner more interest.’

  ‘I wonder what it does.’ Melissa stopped eating to stare at the ceiling as though imagining all the many things such a device might be capable of. ‘I mean, it could be anything. If it’s still functioning, maybe it’s some sort of quintessence aggregator. Maybe, with this thing, we can get other artefacts working.’

  ‘I doubt it,’
Nava said. ‘To me, it looked like a container. It looks like it was built to contain something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have no idea. On the other hand, the Harbingers went to the trouble of building something which would keep whatever it is locked up forever. I can’t see it being good.’

  Melissa’s eyebrows rose. ‘Well, that’s certainly dramatic. Have you been reading Gothic horror novels?’

  Nava gave a small shrug. ‘It’s just a feeling. I don’t think anything good is going to come of messing with that artefact. If it was me who found it, I’d have dropped it in the nearest black hole.’

  Mitsuko frowned. ‘You aren’t normally like this. What has you so disturbed about a weird, black box?’

  ‘I have no idea. It just… felt wrong.’

  ‘As far as I could see,’ Melissa said, ‘it was just a black box with some carving on it. Shame we can’t read the writing. That might tell us what’s inside.’

  ‘Personally,’ Nava said, ‘I hope we never find out.’

  235/5/18.

  Lambert pressed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, his brows furrowed. Maybe, just maybe, he should give it up for tonight. It was eight in the evening and he had been working on the artefact scans all of Sunday. His understanding wife knew that he was excited about his new object of obsession, but his daughter was likely to get grumpy if she did not see her father at all today.

  His eyes wandered over the array of screens showing various different views of the artefact. It was proving to be just as fascinating, and enigmatic, as expected. The exterior views were, of course, the epitome of enigmatic. The carved images were probably representations of Harbingers, but there was limited information on exactly what they looked like when they were wandering the galaxy and these carvings were somehow different. It was not something Lambert had yet managed to put his finger on, but there was something a little off about these specific carvings. He had a computer running a comparative analysis of these three images against every other known representation. The writing was as indecipherable as always. The likelihood of anyone ever discovering a Rosetta Stone for the Harbinger language was basically ‘a snowball’s chance in a supernova’ to none.

  The interior scans were a little fuzzy, but from what Lambert had been able to make out, the mechanisms within the case – which was made of an unusually dense material, hence the fuzzy scans – were unlike any human magical engineering. The only absolutely clear thing inside the artefact was a sphere, right at the centre, which none of the scans could penetrate. Sonar, radar, or magical, nothing he had tried could get inside that sphere. Lambert was beginning to suspect that the entire artefact was there to support what had to be some sort of force barrier. Whatever was inside, it had to be exceptionally important.

  He was staring at one interior image, trying to resolve what he was seeing while simultaneously trying to persuade himself to go home, when one thing jumped out at him. In the upper right portion of the image, fuzzy but clear if you looked at it right, there was a switch. It was a classic toggle switch, a stick protruding from a slot. The stick was protruding from the bottom of the slot, as though it had been flicked down. Flicking it up…

  Lambert was alone in the lab. Everyone else had left to have at least a bit of a weekend and Lambert himself should get up and do the same. The switch could be examined more carefully in the morning. Perhaps they could trace what it connected to and work out what it did. Playing with it now was not a good idea.

  But there was a switch…

  One of the spells Lambert had learned to make life easier was Telekinesis. He had enough power to deadlift forty-five percent more weight with his mind than he could with his muscles. That was not necessary to move a toggle switch. The difficulty was in seeing what he was doing. He set up an imaging radar system which had produced the best pictures so far, and then he fumbled around with his mind, using the least amount of power he could muster until he saw the switch move on the radar display.

  ‘Well then,’ he said to the artefact. ‘Let’s see what this does.’

  He flipped the switch.

  235/5/19.

  Courtney stood in lab 126, wondering why someone had let a tornado loose in it. Various bits of equipment had been thrown into other bits of equipment. And ‘bits’ was now the appropriate term for a lot of it. Mixed in with the gear Courtney thought she should probably recognise were several things she did not. Given that this was a lab devoted to analysing Harbinger artefacts, she guessed that she was looking at some of them. They had not been trashed, but they had been haphazardly discarded as though worthless.

  All except for one something anyway. There had been something made out of black material in the middle of the room. Someone had used various heavy objects to smash it. Heavy objects and, probably, magic. Whatever the thing had been, it was in pieces now and the postgrad who had found it was having a fit.

  ‘It’s incredibly important! Lambert will be beside himself!’

  Courtney examined the rather cute blonde who was doing the wailing. There was a vague memory of someone of that build – short, enormous bust, voluminous hair – graduating last year. What was her name? ‘Please calm yourself,’ Courtney said. The name was not coming. Academic track in the last two years… ‘Professor Lambert Stenger Mendel. He’s in charge of this lab?’

  ‘Yes,’ the blonde said. ‘I’m surprised he’s not here. I was sure he’d be here early before he had to go teach.’

  ‘Well, since he’s not, why was this particular artefact so important?’

  ‘It was still working! Obviously, it’s not now. We’ll never be able to put it back together. We have some data recorded. Maybe I could work through that and see whether I could piece it together…’

  ‘Hoshi Horne,’ Kyle said. ‘I think we need to determine what happened before you worry over this jigsaw puzzle. Who was the last person in here last night? And are the security cameras operational?’

  Hoshi Horne Sonkei! Right. Trust Kyle to remember the name of a stacked blonde. Sometimes, Courtney was left feeling inadequate. Now was not the time.

  Hoshi was looking up toward the corners of the room where it was quite clearly visible that the cameras were not operational now. ‘I don’t think they were damaged like that before. All the data is filed centrally. The SSF has access to that, right?’

  ‘We do,’ Courtney said. ‘I’ll file the request to pull last night’s data on my way to class.’ She sighed. ‘Why do I feel like this is just the start of a long, annoying day?’

  ‘Because you’re just that smart, boss,’ Kyle replied. It was not an especially comforting statement.

  ~~~

  Sure enough, things escalated rapidly. Courtney was just waiting for her tactics teacher to arrive for second period when her ketcom signalled the arrival of an urgent message. Being captain of the SSF came with responsibilities which occasionally included having to do catch-up on her own time because she had to skip the odd class, and it looked like her tactics instructor was about to be annoyed with her.

  The message was short: Professor Lambert Stenger Mendel reported missing. Security records indicate that he was the last person to leave Laboratory 126 in the Magical Sciences Building. The school requests an official SSF search for Lambert Stenger.

  Great. It looked like she was not the only one who would be missing a few classes today.

  ~~~

  As the search began for the missing lecturer, Lambert Stenger was hidden away in the basement of the Magical Sciences Building, using his ketcom, plugged into a service terminal, to access a lot of information that Lambert Stenger should have already known.

  He was having considerable trouble operating the interface, but he was managing to pull up historical records going back to the start of the Clan Worlds Alliance and even further back. He was learning why the galaxy was the way it was, but not what he wanted to know.

  A memory surfaced and he made a new search: Harbingers.

 
With a growing feeling of disquiet, Lambert began to read the new documents his search had brought up.

  ~~~

  Combining a search for Lambert Stenger with a routine patrol seemed to Kyle like a worthwhile use of his time. Classes had just let out for the afternoon. This was frequently the time when shit happened. He had heard the term spoken by some sort of monster on a truly ancient, absolutely classic old Earth action/horror movie and it had stuck in his head. He considered ‘shit happens’ to be an excellent summary of the nature of the universe, not to mention exactly what you could expect when a bunch of young adults armed with lethal sorcery came rushing out of boring lectures.

  He moved at a leisurely pace, taking his time and keeping his eyes open for problems. Marching around like you had a purpose tended to attract attention, which was not what he wanted. Kyle’s grandmother had been fond of the phrase ‘you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.’ Kyle had found that you caught more students up to no good by making sure they did not know you were there until you had them in an arm lock. Of course, students were not flies. Well, maybe some of them were not that different…

  He was walking the boundary between the school – the part devoted to teaching – and the postgraduate research area when he finally spotted something wrong. Well, not wrong exactly, but also not right. Someone was wandering along a path, looking like they had no idea where they were or what they should be doing. They did not get many visitors at the school because it was some distance from the nearest town. The visitors they did get usually had some idea of what they were there for, or they were with someone who did. And on closer inspection, they were not usually a member of faculty reported missing that morning.

  ‘Professor Lambert Stenger?’ Kyle asked as he approached the confused man.

  Lambert blinked at him. ‘Uh, yes. I think.’

  ‘You… think?’

  ‘I… I woke up in a storeroom. W-what day is it?’