Humans

by A. G. Claymore

He glanced down at a provost rating who was gasping on the deck, every part of his body subjected to massive gravity. “You want to get a taste for how things are changing? Wait till we hand this ship over to the Lady Bau.”

  He looked back up at his companions, a hard expression on his face. “Just don’t trust everything you see,” he warned. He turned and started walking again. “In the HQE you’re only useful until you’re not.”

  Thinking Big

  Plugging the Leak

  Babilim Station, Babilim System

  The horizon, even from orbital height, seemed almost flat.

  Meesh stepped back from the glazed section of floor with a shiver. “You know, I’ve been this high in just an EVA suit – hells, I’ve been in some seriously fornicated crashes – but this is some unnerving shit, right here!”

  “What’s your problem?” Mila asked him.

  “My problem,” Meesh explained, “is that this damned structure isn’t a ship. It has no engines to hold it up, just a flimsy elevator shaft.”

  “Well, this is the only way down to the station, so…”

  “And why is it the only way?” Meesh demanded. “I’ll tell you why…”

  “Kind of figured you would…”

  “Because they can charge us for access to the surface,” he continued as if she hadn’t inserted her sarcastic comment. “Ten to the fifth power more surface area than a standard planet and the only way down is on their elevators.”

  “Well, they’re the only transit node in the entire region,” Mila said, “so they can get away with any crazy rules they want to make up.”

  “Stupid would be a better way to describe it,” Meesh grumbled. “S’why ninety-five percent of the surface is still just ruins. Nobody wants to invest in such a backward jurisdiction.”

  “Wouldn’t mind seeing some of the ruins while we’re down there,” she said wistfully.

  “You an amateur xeno-archeologist or something?” he asked, casting her a sideways glance.

  “You sound surprised,” she accused, looking around at the heavy rumbling sound that suddenly filled the passenger waiting-room.

  “I dunno,” he shrugged. “Just seems odd coming from someone in ops.”

  “You think only engineers could be interested in stuff like ancient civilisations that died out tens of millennia before the HQE came along?”

  “I didn’t say my surprise was based on any kind of logic,” Meesh countered. “It’s just a lame prejudice of mine against any non-engineering folk.”

  “You notice a weird feeling?” she asked, abandoning the previous line of conversation.

  “Aside from feeling as though the place is on the verge of falling?”

  “It feels like something is trying to get my attention.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “Something or someone?”

  She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. It’s like a ghost or something. It’s creeping me out.”

  Meesh chewed on his lip, gazing around the room. “Nope. Not a thing, but I’m not as perceptive as you.”

  He looked over as a massive set of doors, big enough to slide an eight-story building through, began to rumble open. They moved along with the crowd as they headed for the narrow bridge that would lead through to the passenger lounge at the top of the elevator truck.

  The bridge matched the overall design aesthetic of the ancients. Everything looked heavy, as though carved from stone. Even the bridge looked too heavy to hold its own weight and it was just as ornate. The heavy side-walls were a golden metal, richly decorated with relief carvings of faces, petroglyphs and angular border-lines.

  Calling it metal, Meesh realized, is a bit lazy. When you looked at it, really looked at it, you could see into it. There were veins and whorls of thicker golden color running through an almost bronzish haze. The surface was smooth and reflective.

  The railings were the thickness of Meesh’s thigh and of a slightly more brassy internal coloring, complete with a greenish patina where hands rarely touched.

  Everything up here looked like a temple – solid, ornate, heavy. Something that had no place balanced above a vertigo-inducing elevator column.

  “Anyway,” Meesh muttered quietly over his shoulder, “you’ll be seeing plenty of ruins. This is an almost untouched sector. The official population below us is maybe a couple hundred at the most, which is why there are less than twenty passengers waiting up here with us. The place we’re headed is off the books.”

  He looked behind her. “We stink or something?”

  She looked back at the rest of the passengers. They were at least twenty feet behind them on the catwalk, bunched up between the railings but not getting any closer to the two Humans. “Huh!” She turned back to Meesh. “You know, I noticed they were staying clear of us in the lounge as well.”

  The huge doors began thundering shut even before they reached the passenger platform, suspended eight stories above the cargo deck. Meesh angled over to the railing on his right and stopped to look down into the gloom.

  Three quarters of the cargo hold consisted of automated storage racking, though he doubted the robotic gantries had moved themselves in tens of thousands of years. The remaining quarter, apparently left clear of racking to accommodate large items, sufficed for shipments to this remote surface outpost.

  Looking like tiny insects, the cargo handlers were locking down the grav-plating under the nine pallets of official supplies.

  “Looks like smuggling is alive and well, despite the restrictions against shuttle traffic,” Mila nodded at the forty-odd pallets that were being secured with physical netting. “They must bribe the staff to net their goods so it doesn’t show on the grav-plate records.”

  “The grav-plates probably trigger a scan protocol,” Meesh surmised. He took another look back at the rest of the passengers and snorted in amusement when he saw them standing, still twenty feet away. One of the Quailu raised a hand and drew his thumb down across his torso on a diagonal.

  Meesh leaned close to Mila. “That guy just made the sign against Nergal! I think the false rumor we’ve been cultivating about ourselves is starting to take hold.”

  She started to turn her head to look but caught herself and looked at Meesh instead. “Unbelievable!” She shook her head. “I suppose the best lies are the unbelievable ones.” She stepped back from the railing.

  “We should keep moving, so those poor folk don’t have to spend the whole ride cowering on the catwalk.”

  The elevator truck’s lounge was an eye-opener. The waiting room out in the station was normally appointed, but much of the original furnishings were still in place on the elevator.

  Perhaps because this elevator led to an out-of-the-way maintenance settlement, the old seating hadn’t been removed. New chairs had been chem-fused to the decking in front of long rows of seats designed to accommodate passengers twice the size of a Human.

  It was decorated in the same style, a style that Meesh was coming to think of as Sacred Ancient. He didn’t think it sounded quite right and, when he mentioned it to Mila, his misgivings were confirmed.

  “I’d use a word more like hallowed or maybe monastic?” she suggested. “But I get what you’re going for. The folks that built this place sure seemed to take themselves seriously.”

  They both threw out their hands for balance as the elevator began the drop back to the surface. The dampening fields locked the sensation down quickly enough but they were clearly designed for creatures that occupied more of the compartment’s vertical space.

  The other passengers were seated as far as possible from the two Humans, many of them pretending not to have any reason to look their way, even if it meant spending the entire descent looking to their left. Meesh chuckled. “Better to be feared than despised, I suppose.”

  Mila quirked her eyebrows at the odd statement but quickly turned her attention back to the rapidly approaching surface of the station. “Why bother to make mountains?” she asked.

  Me
esh turned to follow her gaze out the lounge windows. “That’s no mountain,” he said, getting up from his chair to stand beside her. “That’s one of the thousands of abandoned cities that cover this place. The one they’ve refurbished as the trade-hub and capital is on the other side and they have about forty million people living in it. Forty million imperial citizens and they say the place is still like a ghost town.

  “Place we’re going is just outside this abandoned city, Commercial hub on one side and passenger port on the other but they don’t use it. Nobody lives in that place.”

  She grinned at him. “Haunted?”

  “Aren’t these places always?” he said dryly.

  “They must have to keep those lights on round the chrono,” she said, nodding to the small dots of brightness in the distance. Might have been easier to build this nearer a star.”

  “Doesn’t get any closer than this, or didn’t you wonder what all those other planets were orbiting?” Meesh needled her.

  Her eyes grew wide. “There’s a star in there? How can they possibly contain a star in such a small construct?”

  “This is an old system. They built around a white dwarf which let them build smaller and live on the outside. The star’s gravity is enough to keep an atmosphere on the surface, not to mention the inhabitants. Thankfully, the ancient giants were accustomed to something close to Imperial Standard Gravity.”

  “Gods!” she breathed. “Can you imagine the kind of power they must be harvesting if they have a white dwarf contained inside that thing?”

  “Or what they might have been forging with all that power,” Meesh added reverently. “We plug the leak first and then we take a look around. Gleb will understand if we’re a little late picking him up.”

  They both stepped back as nearby towers seemed to be racing up directly toward them but the heavy-boned, ornate structures proved to be at least a few hundred meters from the elevator. The elevator flowed past, slowing as the vehicle approached the end of the shaft.

  They slid to a halt with another tug at their guts and the massive doors once again rumbled open. Meesh placed a hand on Mila’s shoulder. “Let the locals off first. We’ll draw less attention if we’re not scaring their relatives on the arrival platform.”

  It took some time, but the other passengers eventually realized the Humans were waiting for them to leave first. It was like watching a hole blow out in the side of a hull.

  The first few passengers started to move and the rest, triggered into motion, suddenly rushed for the catwalk. The usual disorderly gathering up of belongings was accomplished with a speed that astonished Meesh. Within a few seconds, the two Humans were alone and they moved toward the catwalk, at least fifty feet behind the closest local passenger.

  They crossed the bridge, looking down to see that the cargo handlers weren’t the only ones in the hold. A small crowd had come in the open doors to collect their illicit cargo. More were waiting outside with pallets and one of them was waving his credit chip over the forearm of a security operator.

  Most of the passengers and those greeting them were already moving off the arrivals platform by the time Meesh and Mila stepped off the catwalk. One of the more richly dressed Quailu was still there, angrily accosting a large auto-cab.

  “Open!” he shouted. “Open this instant or I’ll have your license revoked!”

  It seemed unlikely that he didn’t see the ‘reserved for Meeshkennu’ holo-sign rotating above the roof. It was pretty clear that the cab was waiting for someone.

  It seemed equally clear that the Quailu considered himself above such considerations.

  “Guy’s trying to jack our ride?” Mila said indignantly. She looked at Meesh and both stopped, grinning. “Nergal or just a couple of his minions?” she asked.

  “Minions, I think,” he replied laconically. “We don’t want to overdo it. If Nergal starts popping up everywhere, folks will get suspicious. You unmask first and I’ll follow your lead.”

  They both closed off their minds, Mila a little more quickly than Meesh. She’d take the lead because she was one of the most promising recruits in the understanding.

  They both imagined the horrors of the underworld, a scene they’d all practiced for the sake of consistency. They adopted the attitude one might expect of Nergal’s servants, released from the shadow-life of the dark, dismal underworld to wreak havoc upon the living. They focused their rage at the still-living upon the Quailu at the cab.

  And they opened their minds.

  The wealthy Quailu seemed to physically shrink under the sudden mental onslaught. He spun around, falling back against the cab, arms up to ward against his oppressors. He bumped his head against the vehicle’s window as Mila leaned close, his eyes wide.

  “We seek Meeshkennu,” she snarled, baring her teeth, eyes flashing with barely controlled madness. She gestured to the holo-sign above the cab.

  “He’s trying to get into the cab,” Meesh growled. “Clearly he’s the one we seek! Get on with it!”

  “It’s not me!” the Quailu shrieked. “I don’t know any Meeshkennu; I swear it before all the gods!”

  “Liar!” Mila spat. “You would defile the gods over an auto-cab? Small wonder you’ve been given over to our keeping, Meeshkennu!”

  His head shaking convulsively, the Quailu slid sideways against the vehicle. He made a break for it with a strangled yelp of adrenaline-soaked fear. His feet tangled and he went down in a heap of misfiring limbs.

  Meesh took a step toward him and he scrambled away, coming back to his feet and racing off. “Running is a waste of time, Meeshkennu!” he shouted after the fleeing figure. “Now that we know your face, the scent of your soul, there is no way for you to hide!”

  He turned away as their victim caught a foot on a railing and tumbled down the platform stairs. “That alone makes this trip worthwhile,” he said mildly.

  He stepped back to the cab. “I’m Meeshkennu,” he told the vehicle cheerfully, holding out his hand so it could scan his implant.

  The side slid open and the two Humans shared a glance. “Not nanite-based,” he said, “and it’s pretty big. Probably built by the same ancients that made the station.”

  They climbed aboard and the door slid shut. The seats inside, just like on the elevator, were twice the standard size. There were no smaller seats here, but someone had attached a step to help passengers climb up onto the original seats.

  Meesh settled into the seat, his legs stretched out in front. “This must be what it feels like to be a child,” he mused. “I imagine everything seems too large to a youngling.”

  Mila was on her knees, looking out a side window. “The grandeur of a place like this must take some getting used to,” she said wistfully. “Hmm…” She turned back to Meesh. “We’re already out of the settled zone, I think, but we’re not slowing down at all.”

  Meesh joined her at the window. “So Eddu might win the pool, after all.”

  “He might share it,” she corrected. “There were at least ten people saying this guy we’re meeting is just killing whoever comes to buy his information and stealing their credits.”

  “Right,” he conceded, “but he was the first to suggest it, so he’s getting the biggest share of the pot.” He gazed out calmly at the dark shadows that raced past the window for a few more moments and then sat back down.

  “Let’s hope there aren’t too many of the bastards or we won’t be able to freeze ‘em all.” He sighed. “I suppose we’d just have to start killing them instead. Start at the back of their group, so they don’t notice what’s happening until it’s too late…”

  “He might not be planning on killing us,” she admonished. “Let’s see what happens when we get there.

  The cab dipped sharply and they could see what looked like a huge crater rim more than two kilometers away. The rim reared up to occlude the stars and they raced across to the far side, both Humans pressing their hands, uselessly, into the seat as they raced toward the sheer wall of in
tegrated structures at a speed they couldn’t even estimate.

  A haze of light began to resolve itself into a collection of individual pinpoints. The points edged apart as they approached, now showing spills of yellow light on hard golden surfaces. The walls revealed their ornamentation and the inhabitants were suddenly noticeable as they moved about the landing pad ahead.

  The auto-cab slid to a halt and they stepped out into a vast landing bay, where the cool air was dappled with the smells of decaying seals, oxidised metals and rarely-washed bodies. Nobody seemed to care about the two Humans.

  “Doesn’t seem like anybody here is expecting us,” Meesh commented.

  “Nor are they terribly upset at our presence,” Mila said.

  “Well, they’re probably smugglers or unlicensed tech prospectors,” he explained shrugging. “Probably both, really. The two professions are complementary, after all. They tend to be a pragmatic bunch, not so prone to supernatural rumors.”

  “Well, at least we aren’t facing off against all these guys.” Mel nodded at the forty-odd workers of various races. “If they knew a guy selling info about Humans, they’d sure as hells react to a couple of us suddenly showing up down here.”

  “An excellent point, Petty Officer Mila. Let’s put that to the test.”

  “What did you have in mind, Master Warrant Officer Meesh?”

  “We investigate by strolling around. If someone reacts with surprise or alarm, we have a chat with them.” He tilted his head at her. “Unless you can suggest something better, that is.”

  “You want my honest opinion?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sounds a little too indirect, seeing as most of these guys probably aren’t in on the deal.” She turned to a large Durian who had a flow-holo hovering in front of him, just under his line of sight. He was directing several workers to get some wrap on a pallet of jumbled parts.

  “Hey,” she called to him, “looking for Melchior.”

  The Durian looked up at her, taking a moment for her words to properly register, then he scanned around the space, nodding to a back corner. “That’s him… the Ashurapolitan with the emergency suit-pack. Don’t lend him any money, if you can help it.”