Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies)

by Jasper T. Scott

  “What does it matter if they die yesterday or they die a thousand years ago?” Brak asked. “They are dead, and that is all that matters.”

  “But what killed them?” Addy asked.

  “And is it a threat to us?” Lucien added, as he picked his way among the bodies. He shone his headlamps into the helmet of the nearest armored Faro and saw papery green skin barely clinging to jutting white bones. Hollow black eye sockets glared sightlessly up at the dripping fangs of stalactites above. The head looked shrunken, and very old. “This one’s been mummified by his armor,” Lucien said, noting that the soldier’s armor appeared to be intact. “They definitely didn’t die recently.” He rolled the body over, looking for damage he couldn’t see, but the glossy black armor was pristine.

  “What are you doing?” Addy asked, her nose wrinkled with disgust as he rolled the body back the other way.

  “I can’t figure out what killed him,” Lucien explained. He walked over to the next armored body. It was another green-skinned Faro, also mummified. He repeated his examination, and again found the soldier’s suit of armor intact. He sat back on his haunches and shook his head. “I don’t get it. There’s no visible cause of death.”

  Garek walked over, his boots crunching through gravel. The sound echoed softly through the cavern. “What do you want, an autopsy report? Let’s keep moving.”

  Lucien shook his head. “That Polypus led us here for a reason.”

  “Maybe he did, but I don’t think that reason was for us to play forensic detective.”

  Lucien glanced up at Garek. “If we can figure out what killed them, we might also figure out what we’re up against down here. The Mokari said no one has ever returned from the underworld, so whatever the threat is down here, it’s obviously an ongoing one.”

  Garek shrugged. “Maybe the Polypuses are the threat.”

  Lucien frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe they killed the Faros.”

  “But not us?”

  “And how did they kill the Faros?” Addy asked. “There are no signs of injury on the armored ones.”

  “I can’t pretend to understand their motives,” Garek said, “but think about it: eight years ago they ripped the timer implants out of our heads without hurting us or even breaking our skin. So, what’s stopping them from doing the same thing with vital organs?”

  Addy looked horrified. She cast a quick look around the chamber.

  “The Abaddon clone we found was headless,” Lucien pointed out.

  Garek shrugged. “It’s just a theory.”

  “I find something,” Brak said. “Come see.”

  They found the Gor standing about fifty feet away, gazing down at something by his feet. They all hurried over to see what had caught Brak’s attention: a large white skeleton lay at his feet, as well as another, smaller and semi-translucent one. The skulls gave them away. The larger of the two had a pronounced snout with long, sharp white teeth, while the other skull was almost as big, but with a tiny mouth, giant eye sockets, and an over-sized cranium.

  “It’s a Gray and a Mokari,” Lucien said.

  “And another Abaddon,” Garek added, pointing to another blue-skinned, gray-robed Faro, also headless, lying beside the skeletons.

  “They all died fighting together,” Addy said.

  Brak nodded. “Yes.”

  “But were they fighting against each other, or with each other?” Lucien asked.

  “Good question,” Garek said.

  “The dead cannot help us,” Brak decided. “But I find something that might.”

  “What’s that?” Lucien asked.

  “Come.” Brak led the way, picking his way through the ancient battlefield.

  After a few minutes of walking, Lucien glimpsed a pinprick of light shining at the far end of the chamber, almost three hundred meters away, according to his sensors.

  “What is that?” Addy asked, pointing to it.

  At first Lucien thought it might be the Polypus who’d led them here, but one look at his sensors revealed that it was actually an opening into a much larger adjoining chamber. That chamber seemed to go on forever, expanding rapidly across Lucien’s sensor display as they approached. It was almost perfectly spherical, and hollow.

  “I’m getting some massive energy readings from that direction,” Garek said.

  Lucien double-checked with his own sensors, and found the same thing.

  “What is it?” Addy asked.

  “It’s too uniform to be naturally occurring,” Lucien said, noting how perfectly spherical it was.

  “Yes,” Brak agreed.

  “Those power readings could be from the gateway we’re looking for,” Lucien said.

  “It can’t be that easy,” Addy replied.

  “Why not?” Lucien asked.

  “If it were so easy to find this gateway, then why didn’t Abaddon just send another army down here and take it for himself?”

  “It obviously didn’t go so well for him the last time,” Garek pointed out. They were still wading through Faro corpses.

  “Something’s obviously guarding the gateway,” Garek went on. “My bet is it’s the Polypuses.”

  Lucien considered that. “If they’re against Abaddon, then why stop at guarding this place? Why not go fight him? We obviously can’t hurt them, and if Abaddon’s afraid of them, then that implies that he can’t either. They’d be an invincible army.”

  “Maybe they’re pacifists,” Garek suggested.

  “I’m reading lots of life signs on the other side of that opening,” Addy said.

  The circle of light in the distance had resolved into a pair of large metal doors that were deformed and scorched black. The doors were bowed inward, as if a plasma bomb had ripped them open. A faint blue haze rippled over the opening, indicating the presence of an atmospheric shield.

  They slowed their pace as they reached the opening. The glare from it was dazzling, making it impossible to see what was on the other side.

  “I’ll go through first,” Lucien said, and walked through before anyone could argue. He heard and felt the atmospheric shields sizzle against his exosuit as he crossed the threshold. Then his feet touched a hard, flat surface that echoed with his footsteps.

  His eyes adjusted quickly to the brightness, and he saw that he was standing inside some kind of giant concourse. Dead ahead, a high wall of shattered viewports gazed out on a blinding sphere of light. The light was as bright as a sun, and painful to look at. Lucien’s faceplate auto-polarized and more details of his surroundings snapped into focus.

  “Lucien?” Addy asked over the comms.

  “I’m fine...” he said.

  He heard faint sizzling sounds as the others walked in behind him.

  The walls and floor of the concourse looked like they might once have been opulent, but now they were discolored and broken. The floor was littered with shattered black rocks, more Faro bodies, and skeletons of Grays and Mokari. A thick layer of dust covered everything.

  Looking out through the shattered viewports once more, Lucien saw that the blinding orb of light hung suspended between two giant black towers, one coming down from the ceiling of the spherical chamber, the other rising up from the floor. All around the light source, vibrant colors assaulted Lucien’s eyes in a confusing tapestry that was somehow too intricate, or too distant to make sense of.

  “It’s incredible...” Addy breathed.

  Lucien turned away from the glaring light to find her standing to one side of the concourse, looking out over a vibrant field of flowers. He went to stand beside her and admire the view, but he quickly noticed that there was something very wrong with that scene.

  Somehow everything was turned on its end and wrapped around the inside of the spherical chamber. The landscape outside the concourse sprawled for tens of kilometers in all directions, defying gravity from every possible angle. A towering alien forest rose up beyond the flowering field, but it lay parallel to the floor of the concour
se. Likewise for the sheer white mountains that peeked over the tops of those trees.

  Lucien looked straight up, through a broken skylight, and saw a sparkling blue lake arcing overhead, wrapped concave against the inside of the sphere and surrounded by jungle.

  The Mokari underworld was like a miniature planet that had been turned inside-out, and the only part of it where gravity still functioned the way it should was in the concourse where they stood.

  “What’s holding everything against the walls like that?” Addy asked.

  “Something’s warping the gravity in this place,” Garek said.

  “So why aren’t we falling against that wall?” Addy nodded to the broken entrance they’d walked through. It lay along the inside of the sphere, parallel to the ground outside. If gravity were warped the way Garek was suggesting, then they should have been standing on the wall of the concourse, not the floor.

  The whole setup confused Lucien’s brain to the point that he suddenly felt like he was falling. He flinched and shook his head to clear away that sensation.

  “This must be some kind of transition zone,” Garek said. “I spotted what looked like a tram station down that way.” He pointed to the viewports that looked out—up?—at the blinding ball of light in the center of the chamber.

  Lucien nodded slowly. “This is the entrance to the underworld.”

  Addy snorted. “Under-world. I didn’t realize the Mokari were being so literal when they named the place. Who do you think lived here?”

  “The Grays, who else?” Lucien asked. “I bet they built it.”

  “Then Katawa was definitely lying about not being able to join us down here because it would defile his deity,” Addy said.

  Garek snorted. “I think that goes without saying. He didn’t come down here because he was afraid of whatever killed that army outside.”

  “Afraid of the Polypuses?” Addy asked.

  “Or something else,” Lucien replied. “We shouldn’t assume we’re safe from them just because they helped us once. The one who led us here might not be as friendly. It may have lured us here.”

  “So it led us here to... what? Kill us? Eat us?”

  Lucien shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “The temperature in here is a balmy 300 K,” Garek said. “And I’m reading breathable air.”

  “I guess we won’t be suffocating after all,” Addy said.

  Garek nodded and twisted off his helmet with a hiss of escaping air. He took a deep breath, and a rare smile crossed his face. “Smells like a dream, too. Must be all those flowers outside.”

  Lucien shot him a frown. “Just because our sensors aren’t detecting anything dangerous doesn’t mean the air’s safe to breathe.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Garek replied, and tucked his helmet under one arm. “Besides, Katawa fixed us up, remember?”

  “Now you’re trusting him?” Lucien asked dubiously.

  Garek shook his head. “No, but Katawa has nothing to gain from the atmosphere killing us. He obviously needs us to find that key and open the gateway.”

  Lucien looked away, back to the overgrown field. “Any idea how we can get down there? We could jump out and use our grav boosters, but we’re going to fall sideways. Landing on our feat might not be so easy.”

  “What about those?” Addy pointed to a row of circular openings to one side of where they stood.

  Lucien spied translucent tubes snaking down from the openings to the ground. “They look like giant slides to me,” he said, walking up to the nearest one.

  Addy walked over to stand by the slide next to his. “On three?” she asked.

  “On two,” Lucien replied.

  “One...”

  “Two,” Lucien finished, and dove head-first down the slide.

  Chapter 31

  Astralis

  Lucien busied himself while waiting for Tyra to come home by installing baby gates in their rental home. Atara stood over his shoulder, watching him work, while Theola was taking a nap in her room downstairs.

  “Is it going to keep me from falling down the stairs, too?” Atara asked.

  Lucien glanced over his shoulder at Atara while screwing the gate frame into the wall. He flashed her a smile and shook his head. “You already know how to use the stairs,” he said.

  “But what if I trip?”

  “That’s why you need to hold on to the railing.”

  Lucien finished driving in the last screw and sat back on his haunches to admire his work. A bead of sweat trickled down from his hairline, itching maddeningly as it went. Lucien wiped his brow on his sweater sleeve, scratching the itch at the same time.

  He swung the gate shut to test it, and the locking mechanism automatically clicked into place.

  “How do I open it?” Atara asked.

  “Like this. Watch.” Lucien pointed to the sliding catch at the top of the gate. “Slide this, and pull up at the same time.” He opened the gate and then shut it again with another click. “Now you try.”

  Atara had to use both hands. She was barely tall enough to pull up on the gate, but she managed to wrench it open, her cheeks bulging with the effort.

  “Wow... it’s hard,” she said.

  “Well, if it were easy, then Theola could open it, too.”

  Atara nodded sagely at that.

  “Speaking of Theola...” Lucien checked the time on his ARCs. “We’d better go wake her up. She’s not going to sleep tonight if I let her sleep any longer. I’d better make her a bottle first, though,” Lucien said as he started down the stairs.

  “If you don’t, she’s going to scream like her head’s been cut off!” Atara suggested, walking down behind him.

  “Exactly,” Lucien said, frowning at the gruesome analogy.

  “She always wakes up hungry,” Atara said.

  “Yes, she does,” Lucien agreed absently.

  “How can someone scream if their head is cut off?” Atara asked.

  Lucien grimaced. “It’s just an expression, Atty.”

  “Chickens can still run around without their heads,” Atara mused on their way to the kitchen.

  “All right, that’s enough.”

  “It’s true!” Atara insisted.

  Lucien stopped on the landing halfway down the stairs and turned to her. “I don’t care if it’s true; that’s not what I’m objecting to. You shouldn’t focus on those things.”

  “Why not?” Atara asked.

  “Because it’s not okay. You might get desensitized.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means... never mind. Just think about nice stuff, all right?”

  “Fine.” Atara went down the stairs in a huff, heading for the living room, while Lucien continued on to the kitchen. He made a bottle for Theola and then went to fetch her from her crib.

  When he walked in, he found Atara standing beside the crib, watching Theola sleep.

  “What are you doing?” Lucien asked, puzzled by her behavior.

  Atara turned to him with a smile. “She looks so peaceful.”

  Lucien stopped beside the crib to admire Theola, too. “She does,” he agreed.

  “She’s not even waking up,” Atara said. Theola hadn’t stirred at the sound of their voices. “It’s like she’s dead.”

  He shot Atara a cold look. “Why would you say something like that?” he demanded.

  Atara’s lower lip quivered. “Why are you yelling?”

  Lucien scowled and shook his head. “You don’t say things like that about your sister, do you understand me?”

  Atara scowled right back, as if he was the bad guy. “Why not?”

  Theola woke up at the sound of their arguing, and immediately began to cry. She sat up and popped her thumb in her mouth, watching them with big, wary blue eyes.

  Lucien turned to Theola. “Come here, sweetheart,” he said, holding out his arms. She climbed to her feet and held out her arms in turn, waiting to be picked up. He scooped her into a one-armed e
mbrace, and showed her the bottle of milk, and a smile sprang to her lips. She began bouncing on his hip trying to reach it.

  “You want this?” he asked, shaking the bottle just out of reach.

  Theola’s smile faded to a dramatic pout when the bottle didn’t immediately replace the thumb she’d been sucking. Her lower lip trembled briefly, and then she started crying.

  Lucien laughed. “Okay, okay! Here you go.” He gave her the bottle, and she grabbed it with both hands, stuffing it into her mouth.

  Lucien turned back to Atara, but she was gone. He left the room with a frown, wondering if he had been too hard on her. She was only five; she was bound to say strange things sometimes.

  He walked with Theola down the hallway to the living room as she gulped her milk.

  “Atara?” he called.

  No answer.

  “Where are you?”

  Just as he reached the living room, his foot hooked under something, and he tripped. He was going to fall on top of Theola! He couldn’t put out his hands because one of them was holding her. He managed to thrust out his free hand to break their fall, and a sharp pain shot through his fingers as two of them bore all of his and Theola’s combined weight.

  He cried out and crumpled to the floor, being careful to roll onto his back as he did so. Theola landed on top of him, still holding onto her bottle, but no longer sucking it. She grinned and started bouncing on his belly. She thought it was a game.

  “Giddy-up...” he muttered, and Theola giggled enthusiastically, bouncing harder.

  His hand wasn’t hurting anymore, but as he lifted it in front of his face, he saw that his pinky finger was broken—maybe his ring finger, too—and that whole side of his hand was swelling up badly.

  Lucien grimaced. He wasn’t feeling any pain because of the shock. Using his good hand, he carefully lifted Theola off his stomach. Cradling his injured hand to his chest, he sat up to look for what had tripped him, but there was nothing on the floor. He did, however, see Atara standing there, leaning against the wall and watching him.